...it's all you'll have left after his policies are enacted.
Posted on 05/16/2008 3:00:53 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you look a few posts below, you will find the text of President Bush’s powerful and moving speech to the Knesset today. In the course of it, he says something very general:
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. 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.
Bush here is arguing in very broad brush against a generally meliorist view of foreign policy — one, moreover, that is held by many people who work inside his own government. For some reason, people who work for the almost-certain nominee of the Democratic party have decided that Bush was attacking him. As Kate Phillips writes on the New York Times website:
In a telephone interview on CNN just a few minutes ago, Robert Gibbs, the communications director for Senator Barack Obama, called Mr. Bush’s remarks “astonishing” and an “unprecendented political attack on foreign soil.”
An “unprecedented attack on foreign soil”? That is completely deranged. Not only did Bush not mention Obama by name, it is doubtful he or his people were thinking about Obama. The argument that negotiating with terrorists is appeasement akin to Europe’s appeasement of Hitler is a standard view among hawks on the Right — decades old, dating back even before Barry Obama found the audacity to hope in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church. It is exactly the sort of thing a man with Bush’s politics would say in a speech before the Knesset, whether Obama had run for president or not.
The Obama campaign has even issued a statement on the matter in Obama’s name:
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.
I’m not sure what this all says about Obama. Is this smart politics, getting his base riled up on his behalf? Is he trying to use Bush as a wedge to make the case to the Jewish community in the United States that the bad man in the White House is mischaracterizing him and therefore Jews should like him more? Is he trying, for the millionth time, to rule any criticism of himself out of reasonable bounds by complaining about something that isn’t even criticism of him?
Or is this just another example of Obama’s thin-skinned-ness?
As somebody said on another related thread: “If you throw a rock into a pig pen and you hear a squeal, you know your shot hit one.”
I remember it well. The huge difference changed me from a Democrat to a Republican.
Thank you for your service! I have a son - Marine SGT/MAJ who retired after 30 years. Bless you!
I was in Army Intelligence (including the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division) and my late father was a retired Communications Chief/Gunnery Sergeant. Thank your son for me.
That unidentified senator turns out to be a Republican, William Borah, of Idaho. And Bush is not the first person to use him as an example of an appeaser (to take the load off poor old Neville?). Senator Borah's Wikipedia article even has a section devoted to the Hitler quote:
Hitler quote
Borah may be best known today for having allegedly said, in September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided."[9] The quote has been repeatedly cited as evidence of the alleged naivete of attempts to negotiate with one's enemies. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has referred to the quote in at least three of his columns, making an analogy to negotiating with China in 1989, with North Korea in 1994 and with Iran in 2006.[10] In August 2006 United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the quote when decrying those who want to "negotiate a separate peace with terrorists".[11]On May 15, 2008, President George W. Bush referred to the quote in a speech to the Knesset in Israel commemorating that nation's 60th anniversary, after stating, "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."[12] Some, including Barack Obama himself, interpreted Bush's comment to be a criticism of Obama for his stated willingness to negotiate with the leaders of Iran. CNN reported that White House staff had confirmed this off the record, although Bush's official spokeswoman denied it to the New York Times.[13] Some White House staff stated the reference was meant more as a criticism of former president Jimmy Carter, who has argued that the U.S. should be willing to meet with Hamas.[12]
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Don’t know how you endure their crapola but I can’t do it.
I think Pat B. is actually a lot worse than most leftists, because he is just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous but not endowed with good judgment. When he freaks on GWB over something like this he is just NUTS (Pat B. joins in with the moonbats when he thinks he can score some points in their eyes).
Do you have any idea the difference between the two, from my perspective? Do you remember 18-25% interest rates and double digit inflation? “Malaise” and the Iranian hostage crisis and failed rescue attempt?Yes, I do, but of course none of the younger generation that makes up such a large percentage of the Obama vote does.
This is off-topic, but concerns Obama.
Why don't we turn the MSM's deification of Obama into an opportunity to permanently de-claw the IRS?
This post (<-click), while addressing taxes, helps to explain why government "leaders" like Obama are actually in contempt of the Constitution that they have sworn to defend, foolishly following in the footsteps of FDR's dirty federal spending politics. In fact, the article referenced below shows that Obama is the #1 federal spending proposer in the Senate for '08; Clinton is #2.
Obama, a big-shot federal spenderThe people need to reconnect with the Founder's division of federal and state government powers. The people then need to wise up to the major problem that the federal government is not operating within the restraints of the federal Constitution, particularly where constitutionally unauthorized federal spending is concerned.
The bottom line is that the people need to send big-shot, Constitution-ignoring federal spenders like Obama home as opposed to trying to send people like him to the Oval Office. The people need to get in the faces of the feds, demanding a stop to constitutionally unauthorized federal spending while appropriately lowering federal taxes - or get out of DC.
What’s that in his hand? A pack of cigarettes? A remote?
...it's all you'll have left after his policies are enacted.
The word comfort should have been HOPE and then there would have been an even greater impact.
It’s the Obama campaign’s way of getting headlines on every nonissue. It was all over our local nightly news, with outraged reporters taking their usual shots at Bush.
It’s the Obama campaign’s way of getting headlines on every nonissue. It was all over our local nightly news, with outraged reporters taking their usual shots at Bush.
The argument that negotiating with terrorists is appeasement akin to Europe’s appeasement of Hitler is a standard view among hawks on the Right — decades old, dating back even before Barry Obama found the audacity to hope in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church.
I pray the American people see him for what he is.
I agree with you 100%-—on everything!
I had to concur with the commenter that saw this idiotic picture as “gay porn”. I, like the commenter, have never sought out gay porn, but the artistic “style” doesn't really seem to fit any other category I know of. Another one of the comments thought the picture needed a 70’s VW van. I think I agree with that suggestion.
.......and I am outraged by men with lips so purple that they MUST be wearing lipstick! (The least they could do is choose a more flattering shade!)
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