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Dear President Bush: Democrats Win World Wars, Republicans Win Fireworks Shows |
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There's a big flap today about President Bush's remarks in the Israeli Knesset to the effect that Obama is an appeaser a la American isolationists pre-World War II.
The controversy hinges on the following quote from Bush:
"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, which American senator was that, exactly?
Looking for the source of the quote, I stumbled across this 2006 piece by Charles Krauthammer denouncing Ned Lamont and other antiwar Democrats following Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman that year. Krauthammer gives the same quote as Bush, but mentions a name: William Borah. Borah served as Senator from Idaho from 1907 until his death in 1940.
And oh yeah. Borah was a Republican at a time when Republican isolationists like Robert Taft urged against helping the Allies in World War II.
You see, we love to remember how America won World War II. But we tend to forget that it was a Democrat at the helm. We don't remember Alf Landon or Wendell Willkie as the men who helped save the world.
The whole myth of Democrats being soft on defense spits in the face of history. Both parties have shown poor judgment about which wars to fight, especially in the postwar era, but Democrats have shown better judgment. It was Democratic leadership that won World War II, and it will be Democratic leadership that gets us out of the partisan-generated fiasco in Iraq.
And if you think that "you" or "we" won World War II, Doug Stanhope has some words for you.
Talking is not appeasement–talking is talking. If you negotiate from a place of strength and intelligence, then you have a chance at making progress. It was NOT talking to North Korea for five years that allowed them to develop nuclear weapons. The negotiations prior to that period had held the program in check, and the talks after the five years of Bush-Bolton nonsense have again exercised some degree of control on N. Korean nukes.
The president's comments in Israel were asinine–as offensive as they were ill-informed. Perhaps Bush resorts to force because he and his neocon buddies are too weak and stupid to negotiate