Reactions to story from Time

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  Bush's Politicking at Israel's Knesset Neglects His Role in Hamas' Election Win

  http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/05/8264_bu...
  69 days ago in MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary · Authority: 1,411

  You've likely already read about Bush using the opportunity of his address to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, yesterday to liken...

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    Extravagant Folly

    http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/05/extrav...
    69 days ago in Obsidian Wings · Authority: 1,663

    by Eric Martin Laura Rozen on the hypocrisy of Bush's recent rant in the Knesset and associated matters (a shoddy argument he's leveled at Obama before): You've likely already read about Bush using the opportunity of his address to Israel's parliament,
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  Extravagant Folly

  http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/05/extrav...
  69 days ago in Obsidian Wings · Authority: 1,663

  by Eric Martin Laura Rozen on the hypocrisy of Bush's recent rant in the Knesset and associated matters (a shoddy argument he's leveled at Obama before): You've likely already read about Bush using the opportunity of his address to Israel's parliament,
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  How Sweet! Bush Gives Obama a Gift

  http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/05/how_sweet_bush_gives_ob...
  69 days ago in Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine · Authority: 2,079

  Bush: "How come I only get one thingy to talk into?"Photo: Getty Images Welcome to the first general-election policy debate! (That sounded more exciting in our head.) President Bush was only making a speech at the Israeli Knesset, but he may
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  http://lastdaysofpresidentbush.blogspot.com/2008/05/bush-say...
  44 days ago in The Last Days Of President George W. Bush · Authority: 10

  Bush Says Obama Is Will Appease 'Terrorists' If the Bush administration really stuck to its guns on not negotiating with 'terrorists', there would be no back room negotiations with Syria and Iran, but of course, such talks have been going on for years. Now Israel is negotiating Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, but Bush says nothing. From Justin Raimando, antiwar.com : The unseemly spectacle of an American chief executive denouncing a Democratic presidential candidate in a foreign venue, in front of the parliament of a nation whose interests are inextricably intertwined with the issue at hand, has no precedent in our history. It's as if, say, Lyndon Baines Johnson had journeyed to South Vietnam and attacked the antiwar movement as "appeasers" before an audience of that country's rulers. In our Bizarro World universe, however, where all moral and political values have been stood on their heads, this is what passes for "patriotic" and "pro-American" activism on the part of our chief executive – upholding the interests of a foreign nation over and above your own. After hailing the history of the fight for Israeli sovereignty minus any mention of the Nakba, and without so much as obliquely referring to the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, the president hit at his political enemies back home: "Some seem to believe that 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 I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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." The White House is now saying these comments were directed at Jimmy Carter, but it seems clear that Barack Obama was who the speechwriters had in mind – after all, Carter is about as politically relevant as, say, George W. Bush will be in January. Obama's answer at the YouTube Democratic debate that, yes, he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad, among other world leaders considered unfriendly to the U.S., makes him the obvious target of Bush's remarks. What's interesting, however, is that the senator Bush referred to was a Republican, William E. Borah of Idaho, whose opposition to U.S. intervention in what was then often referred to as "the European war" (i.e., Word War II) was indicative of mainstream GOP opinion circa 1939. One of the great sorrows of Borah's political career was that he had voted for U.S. entry into the first World War, and he resolved never to make such a grievous error again. Borah fought against the very injustices that led directly to the reanimation of that global conflict, which we call World War II, such as the Treaty of Versailles and the imposition of draconian war debts on a prostrate Germany. Perhaps this explains his intractability. I will leave it to historians to defend Sen. Borah at greater length, but suffice to say here that "the Lion of Idaho" deserves better than this. Aside from the historical sleight-of-hand, Bush's blast at Obama over this particular issue from this particular podium is a display of such supreme arrogance – and political calculation – that it takes one's breath away. The U.S. has every interest in negotiating with the Iranians, if only to ensure the physical safety of our troops in Iraq, not to mention all the other outstanding issues [.pdf] between the two nations that have festered, unattended, for so long. When we destroyed Iraq's Ba'athist regime, we handed regional hegemony to Iran on a silver platter, tilting the balance of power in a direction that now cannot be reversed – except by negotiation. Yet negotiation, in Bush's parlance, is "appeasement." Of course, we have talked to the Iranians, in a series of highly publicized meetings (and probably some not so publicized) over events in Iraq. Was that appeasement? No doubt the Israel lobby considered it so. But are those the interests our president is representing? This nonsense about "negotiating with terrorists" when it comes to Hamas ought to evoke in my readers a sense of déjà vu. After all, isn't that the same line they trotted out when it came to the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader, the late Yasser Arafat? Yet didn't two American presidents bring Arafat to the negotiating table? And aren't we now supporting President Abbas, Arafat's heir and successor? One has to wonder why an American president would take to the hustings in a foreign land and champion that nation's interests over and above our own. What treason is this? Well, it isn't exactly treason. It's loyalty to party, as opposed to the nation – a Republican Party that has been whittled down to its hard core of Christian fundamentalists whose first loyalty is not to their own country, but to their peculiar theology, which just happens to be based on a fierce allegiance to the government of Israel. For these are no ordinary Christian fundamentalists, say, of the snake-handling type: these are dispensationalists who believe that after the elect are Raptured up into the heavens, the church on earth (the "new dispensation") will consist of the children of Israel, whose in-gathering will have foretold Christ's second coming. In the dispensationalist theology – really, a future history of the world – the final battle, Armageddon, will take place between the Israelis and the Forces of Evil. They firmly believe that God and all His angels will stand should-to-shoulder with the IDF. This is where Bush's political calculation comes into the picture. For the dispensationalists, there is no issue in the foreign policy realm more important than unconditional support for the state of Israel. They are more fanatically pro-Israel than the Lobby itself, more Likudnik than the Likudniks. Their importance in the rapidly shrinking GOP electoral coalition was made manifest by John McCain's active pursuit of the Rev. John Hagee, a principal exponent of the "born again" Israel-first line and founder of Christians United for Israel. This is a pastor who drapes an Israeli flag on the altar as he preaches in his 5,000-seat Cornerstone Church. These are the foot-soldiers of the neocons, the flying monkeys who do the Lobby's dirty work – an army of religious fanatics whose idiosyncratic theological delusions are a major driving force behind American foreign policy in the Middle East. They are not, however, the only such force. Aside from the organizational muscle of the Lobby itself, mostly confined to such groups as AIPAC and the neoconservative network, there is a Democratic Party component that finds the prospect of dealing with Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah utterly horrifying. Many of these people are big contributors to the party, as Wesley Clark pointed out, and one risks a lot by crossing them. By lashing out at Obama in the way he did, Bush seeks to not only unite and energize his Republican base, but to also disrupt and split the Democrats as they struggle with a very difficult primary process. What is striking about all this is that it gives us a very troubling perspective on how American foreign policy is made – much like sausage, in that you don't really want to know. In response to the endless problems and subtleties that our Middle East dealings confront us with, our president gives us a textbook example of political pandering couched in the crudest sort of rhetoric. We are living in dangerous times. We have a president who formulates policy prescriptions in terms meant to please a cult of religiously motivated ideologues and foreign lobbyists, both of whom are working in tandem to undermine American interests in the Middle East. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, we have faced an implacable enemy more than ready to take advantage of our one-sided policies when it comes to that region of the world. Yet we continue on the same course – on what is essentially a suicide mission – solely because of domestic political considerations and without regard for our actual interests. For years, I've been saying and writing that, when it comes to the Middle East, Washington's policies are ridiculously skewed in Israel's favor, much to our own detriment. What's more, it appears that our policy-making apparatus has been hijacked by agents of a foreign power, who are determined to pursue their alien agenda no matter what the consequences for the U.S. Nothing could have underscored this point more emphatically than George W. Bush's Knesset speech – a peroration that surely indicates Bush missed his true calling and somehow wound up as the president of the wrong country
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  Appeasement in Our Time?

  http://www.oblogatoryanecdotes.com/2008/05/appeasement-in-ou...
  63 days ago in Oblogatory Anecdotes · Authority: 12

  Barack Obama has taken offense at President Bush's Speech where the President warned about the dangers of appeasement. It seems like the President hit a nerve that may prove to be based in reality. Like Neville Chamberlain before him, with Obama as President there may very well be appeasement in our time. A speech by President George W Bush delivered in Israel has set off a firestorm of controversy among Democrats who are claiming it was an attack on Barack Obama's foriegn policy credentials. The White house has denied this and said it was targeted towards Jimmy Carter who has recently met with dictators and terrorists. Obama has already said that as President he vows to do the same thing and directly sit down with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Basher Assad of Syria as well as leaders of Hamas. Even if Bush's speech was aimed at Carter his words still ring true with Barack Obama which is why the accusation of appeasement has hit home with the Democrats. Bush said "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We've heard this foolish delusion before." Bush also mentioned an American senator in 1939 wishing he could have talked Hitler out of his invasion of Poland. "We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement."Bush is absolutely correct. To carry on a duologue with rogue states and terrorists would be a huge mistake and can only result in appeasement. In return for talks our enemies may give false promises of peace in exchange for US concessions, but what we give up will never be enough until we give them what they ultimately want, the complete abandonment of Israel, which is completely unacceptable. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is case in point why negotiations do not work. Israel has offered concession after concession and the Palestinians demand more and more. Remember "Land for peace". Giving up land didn't buy them one iota of good will. Every time there seems to be a peace breakthrough it is always some Palestinian group that sabotages it because their goal is not a Palestinian state living peacefully along side Israel but the entire destruction of Israel. Any negotiations that Israel engages with the Palestinians is a suicide pact on their part because that is the sole aim of the Palestinian Authority. In the movie Independence Day The President asked the alien what they wanted humans to do. The alien simply said "die". How do you negotiate with that? It's the same position that these dictators and terrorists have for us. Dictators and terrorists perceive diplomacy, without the willingness to back it up with force, as a sign of weakness and they will use it to their advantage. The only way to secure peace is to back up our words with strength that will force them to offer concessions not us. With any negotiation the party that has the least to lose always has the upper hand. We need to make sure that our enemies know they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Neither Carter, nor Barack Obama have the ability to negotiate in a position of strength since they have already signaled a willing to make deals with them. Obama as President will offer never ending concessions which will not achieve the peaceful resolution he seeks, but instead repeat the mistakes of appeasement which history has shown over and over again that it will only result in disaster. Related Post: Jimmy Carter, Unwitting Crusader for Islamofascism Trackbacks and Links: Hot Air;Gateway Pundit; Michelle Malkin;Oblogatory Anecdotes - Because Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion!
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  Appeasement in Our Time?

  http://www.oblogatoryanecdotes.com/2008/05/appeasement-in-ou...
  67 days ago in Oblogatory Anecdotes · Authority: 82

  Barack Obama has taken offense at President Bush's Speech where the President warned about the dangers of appeasement. It seems like the President hit a nerve that may prove to be based in reality. Like Neville Chamberlain before him, with Obama as President there may very well be appeasement in our time. A speech by President George W Bush delivered in Israel has set off a firestorm of controversy among Democrats who are claiming it was an attack on Barack Obama's foriegn policy credentials. The White house has denied this and said it was targeted towards Jimmy Carter who has recently met with dictators and terrorists. Obama has already said that as President he vows to do the same thing and directly sit down with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Basher Assad of Syria as well as leaders of Hamas. Even if Bush's speech was aimed at Carter his words still ring true with Barack Obama which is why the accusation of appeasement has hit home with the Democrats. Bush said "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We've heard this foolish delusion before." Bush also mentioned an American senator in 1939 wishing he could have talked Hitler out of his invasion of Poland. "We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement."Bush is absolutely correct. To carry on a duologue with rogue states and terrorists would be a huge mistake and can only result in appeasement. In return for talks our enemies may give false promises of peace in exchange for US concessions, but what we give up will never be enough until we give them what they ultimately want, the complete abandonment of Israel, which is completely unacceptable. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is case in point why negotiations do not work. Israel has offered concession after concession and the Palestinians demand more and more. Remember "Land for peace". Giving up land didn't buy them one iota of good will. Every time there seems to be a peace breakthrough it is always some Palestinian group that sabotages it because their goal is not a Palestinian state living peacefully along side Israel but the entire destruction of Israel. Any negotiations that Israel engages with the Palestinians is a suicide pact on their part because that is the sole aim of the Palestinian Authority. In the movie Independence Day The President asked the alien what they wanted humans to do. The alien simply said "die". How do you negotiate with that? It's the same position that these dictators and terrorists have for us. Dictators and terrorists perceive diplomacy, without the willingness to back it up with force, as a sign of weakness and they will use it to their advantage. The only way to secure peace is to back up our words with strength that will force them to offer concessions not us. With any negotiation the party that has the least to lose always has the upper hand. We need to make sure that our enemies know they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Neither Carter, nor Barack Obama have the ability to negotiate in a position of strength since they have already signaled a willing to make deals with them. Obama as President will offer never ending concessions which will not achieve the peaceful resolution he seeks, but instead repeat the mistakes of appeasement which history has shown over and over again that it will only result in disaster. Related Post: Jimmy Carter, Unwitting Crusader for Islamofascism Trackbacks and Links: Hot Air;Gateway Pundit; Michelle Malkin;Oblogatory Anecdotes - Because Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion!
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  A Ludicrous Denial

  http://politicsorpoppycock.com/2008/05/19/a-ludicrous-denial...
  66 days ago in Politics or Poppycock · Authority: 2

  By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Friday, May 16, 2008; 1:29 PM What do you call it when White House officials say one thing in public and almost the exact opposite in private? You might call it lying. President Bush yesterday took the highly provocative rhetorical step of likening those who support negotiating with our enemies to Nazi appeasers. For [...]
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  Bush and Olmert are both incompetent, criminal nincompoops, and the world would be a better place if they were in a maximum security prison:

  http://illiterateelectorate.blogspot.com/2008/05/bush-and-ol...
  69 days ago in illiterate electorate · Authority: 32

  But I digress.... As many of you have by now heard, President Bush took aim at Sen. Obama through an indirect jab by asserting that talking to one's enemies is a dangerous form of appeasement that leads to genocide: Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,'' Bush said in an address to the Knesset today which drew repeated standing ovations for his commitment to stand by Israel against all enemies. 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. This was said in the Israeli Knesset, making the reference to Hitler all the more inflammatory. Olmert, Israel's incompetent and criminal counterpart to Bush, stood there and applauded, all the while knowing that his government has had back channel talks with Hamas on numerous occasions. This is a man that has literally polled in the single digits and is currently being investigated by the law for corruption. But that is besides the point, which is that Bush used his role as the Head of State to tell the people of Israel that the man who is best positioned to be the next President of the United States might make concessions that lead to your extermination. This is not the message, overt or otherwise, that our leader should be delivering to the legislative body of one of our most important allies. Like Joe Biden said: “This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset and make this kind of ridiculous statement.” Sen. Biden is 100% correct. Besides rising to level of malarkey, Bush's statements were irresponsible and incorrect, and represent really bad diplomacy (which is par for the course). For starters, he did not mention that communication prevented our annihilation in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He did not mention that Israel has only found peace with Egypt (relatively) and Jordan (more clearly) through discussion, and that this is the only peace that they have had with anyone in their neighborhood. He did not even mention that we have achieved progress through communication with North Korea and Lybia under his own government. These were not the words of a Head of State. Instead, this was classic political bantering of the worst most partisan kind, and we are all worse off for it. The United States and Israel, two countries that I care deeply about, are currently being run by criminal morons that have weakened the their countries by every possible metric. Both showed their true selves today, and it was ugly. Here is a clip of the speech:
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  Obama, McCain and Bush mix it up!

  http://prawnblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/obama-mccain-and-bush-...
  68 days ago in PRAWN Blog · Authority: 5

  Ah, gone, we hope forever, are the days when first Mike Dukakis, then Al Gore and then John Kerry responded to attacks by remaining silent! Dukakis said nothing as the elder George Bush hammered him with Willie Horton and disparaged his manhood in failing to respond to the hypothetical rape of his wife. Gore was actually hammered more by the media than he was by the younger George Bush. Constant repetitions of "I invented the internet" and complaints about his audible sighing as Bush told lie after lie dominated that campaign. Kerry was done in by the media collaboration with the Swift Boat Veterans and by Bush focusing the campaign on anything but his own record. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has taken the speech given by President Bush in the Israeli Knesset (Their equivalent of the British Parliament) wherein Bush said: Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century. Some seem to believe that 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 I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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. (Applause.) Of course, as (of all people, we lefty bloggers didn't expect words of wisdom to come out of this guy) Chris Matthews pointed out: ...there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in '38. That's what he did wrong, not talking to somebody. . . . Appeasement is giving away things to the enemy. But Obama has not stood silently by as Bush has questioned his wisdom and manliness: "I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days," he said. Obama said McCain had a "naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism." And yes, Obama is very consciously and deliberately trying (successfully) to tie Bush and McCain together as strongly as possible. He's very clearly attempting to paint a John McCain presidency as a third Bush term. Oh, and by the way, there really isn't any doubt that Bush was speaking of Obama in the Knesset. CNN's Ed Henry reported that:White House aides privately acknowledged the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party. Is attacking a presidential candidate from a foreign parliament standard operating procedure? Not according to Democrats: Democrats accused Mr. Bush of breaching protocol by playing partisan politics overseas. . . . Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic [Senate Majority] leader, called Mr. Bush's remarks "reckless and irresponsible." Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Mr. Bush had behaved in a manner "beneath the dignity of the office of president."Apparently, Republicans are rattled by this response and aren't quite sure how to answer a non-doormat Democrat. Governor Mike Huckabee "joked" (At least that's his explanation) about Obama having to duck a gunman. Huckabee quickly apologized, but it clearly shows a very scattered and confused GOP.

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