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Afternoon Topic: Bush Criticizes Obama in Front Of Israeli Knesset — Has He No Sense of Propriety |
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There is an understood rule in American politics. When overseas, U.S. elected officials do not criticize other American elected officials. "Politics stops at the water's edge" is the mantra that explains this understanding. While this understanding has sometimes sometimes been violated, it has been done by lesser officials, not by the President of the United States. But this morning, before the Israeli Knesset — as he is representing the citizens of this country before the elected officials of another, Bush said this:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Now he doesn't mention Barack Obama directly, and his press flack Dana Perino denied that this passage was about Obama, but the intent is obvious in Bush's words. Invoking World War II when comparing those who want to at least open up dialogue shows that Bush has no sense of propriety.
Wednesday night in a "Special Comment," Keith Olbermann pointed out that Bush actually claimed that he has given up golf to show solidarity with the families of those solders who are fighting, dying and getting injured in Iraq, Olbermann counters:
Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.
The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:
When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at …
When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …
When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.
This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!
That would also be good advice to W when he is in a foreign country. Instead of following accepted decorum, he debases himself and the office of the Presidency by wallowing in the lowest kind of political interjection — comparing those on the other side to Nazis and labelling those who would meet with the other side to appeasers. And he did this in Israel, where while they may despise those who threaten and surround them, they also know that they do not meet the Nazi standard.
As the Obama campaign explains in a released statement about Bush's attack:
It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.
What success can George Bush point to that tells us — American citizens, or just citizens of the world — that we should ever listen to him when it comes to foreign policy?
I'm sure this historical reference is just a coincidence; Bush certainly wouldn't stoop to the level of exploiting the memory of WWII, Nazi expansion, or the Holocaust for political gain now, would he?
"I'm sure this historical reference is just a coincidence; Bush certainly wouldn't stoop to the level of exploiting the memory of WWII, Nazi expansion, or the Holocaust for political gain now, would he?"
I actually get queasy thinking about the discussion among the Bush speech writers that came up with the idea of having the grandson of a Nazi sympathizer/financier/profiteer invoke the Holocaust to make a US domestic political point while standing before the Israeli Knesset.
Q: "Violating Decades of Political Decorum, Bush made not-so veiled Criticisms of Obama on foreign soil, in another country's parliament. Has he no shame?"
A: None whatsoever.
shoot the fucker and put us out of our misery.