Bush Plays the Hitler Card (by Pat Buchanan - sickening!)

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2008 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[elhombrelibre]

Pat just loses it when it comes to the war against Hitler. He believes it was an unnecessary war, the same way he sees the removal of Hussein. He ascribes good intentions to Hitler, like his willingness to negotiate in good faith with those stubborn Poles. And the evil intent of Hitler that carried out where ever he could seems to take the wind out of Pat’s apologias for the man. Amazing. Hitler was killing innocent people, the handicapped long before he demanded the Sudetenland. Pat’s a strange duck when it come to his feelings about Hitler.

[wildbillo0o]

This is no laughing matter. Yet, I can’t stop. Buchanan should quit while I still have respect for the man he once was.

[wildbillo0o]

This article has two stars. I think Hitler would be proud.

I demand a barf alert and a barf bag.

[Wuli]

Pat’s antisemitic side has come out previously more than once in the past - nothing new about it now

[nfldgirl]

I second that!

[Prokopton]

This is what President 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 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."

Although I think it was clear that the Present was making a political point, as long as everyone seems to be nit-picking what Buchanan said, I'll do the same.

No, Mr. President, Negotiating and appeasement are not the same. Buchanan was correct in making this point. Mr. President, you, your father, and many Presidents before have negotiated with terrorists and terrorist supporting countries. Were you just trying to give us the "false comfort of appeasement"? Did all of you think "some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along"?

Negotiating certainly does not imply "that the adversary has both legitimacy and legitimate claims". Prison guards negotiate with rioting prisoners. Police negotiate with hostage takers. Countries negotiate over many things including war and peace. There are no implications of legitimacy or legitimate claims, only an acceptance that the parties can do harm.

Some of you seem to be against any negotiations because either we, as a Country don't seem to be very good at it (just look at our negotiated "free" trade agreements) or that negotiations usually don't work. Both points are valid but not determinative.

Some of you seem quite upset because you have a visceral dislike of Buchanan or an emotional tie to the President. Neither of these lead to valid points in an argument.

I believe the President was flat out wrong in insinuating negotiation is the same as appeasement. I believe he was wrong in using the flaccid "Nazi" comparison when negotiating with Hitler was not the problem, making stupid agreements with him was. Buchanan was correct in pointing out both of President Bush's "mistakes".

I don't have a problem with the President saying what he did as he is a politician making a political point. I don't have any problem with what Buchanan said as he is a political commentator commenting on a political statement. Personally, I am not a huge fan of either one of them.

[goldstategop]

Pat Buchanan is a fool. The Germans never had any real intentions of coming to a compromise over Danzig. The Poles knew any deal would mean the forfeiture of Polish sovereignty and that they were not prepared to do. No self respecting nation would do that. As the Polish government pointed out throughout the Danzig Crisis leading up to World II, a process that begins and ends with one side presenting proposals to the other side that must accepted as is is not a negotiation. It is an ultimatum. The Nazis knew the Poles would not accept Hitler's terms and they wanted an excuse to launch a war upon a country that was no danger to them to destroy it. I'm surprised Buchanan wrote such errant drivel that misstated the nature of the events that led up to the Second World War. In fact, after Hitler had occupied the Czech lands in the spring of 1939, it was clear to every one Poland was his next target and war was simply a question of time. The Western democracies didn't stop him when they could have with little loss of life and by the time they reacted, the world was plunged into a world war. We must stop Iran today while we still can with little loss of life. It is the sane, moral and the realpolitik thing to do.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[OPS4]

Pat Buchanan silent on Hitlery crimes, but bashes President GW!

Bill Clinton Causes Protesters To Be Ejected At Hillary Rally Over Peter Paul Question

The First American Citizens to Publicly Challenge the Clintons About Hillary’s Refusal To Admit Soliciting and Hiding More than $2 million in Illegal Contributions from Peter Paul To Win Her Senate Seat

Bill Clinton Stumps Murray; Protestors Ousted Saturday, May 17, 2008
Murray, KY (WKYX) – Former President Bill Clinton’s visit to Murray was the first presidential visit to the area since Harry Truman, says the Murray Ledger. Murray was just one of his many stops ahead of Tuesday’s primary, stumping for his wife at Murray’s Playhouse in the Park, in which he said Hillary could still win the nomination for the Democratic Party. The rally went as well as one could hope and there was a good-sized turnout. Two protesters at the Murray ‘Hillary Rally’ were escorted by police out of the immediate enclosed area. Their sign referenced the Peter Paul campaign funding scandal.
http://www.peterfpaul.com/

[DoughtyOne]

I addressed Pat’s appologist attitude with regard to Hitler’s actions in WWII. As for negotiating with terrorists, I DO NOT support that in any way shape or form. Not no, but HELL NO.

During negotiations, compromises are made. That means you give up part of your demands in the interest of peace. If you position was solid to begin with, you shouldn’t give up anything in the intest of peace. To do so would mean that future terrorism was a justified and proven method of political gain.

Want to force capitulation from 1 to 100%, just blow up some children. Want the world to buy off on servitude to terrorism, blow up a cruise ship, drop some people off a building, vaporize a market-place.

I’ll never back rewarding this in any fashion.

If we’re talking about the leaders of terrorist states, I say take them out with smart bombs. Put it on the record that the survival rate of terrorists and their sympathizers is less than thirty days after they are found out. That’s the only tactic to take.

Beyond this, the problem with taking a guy out of a spider hole and negotiating with him, is that you also grant him equal stature. If you have a President negotiating with some unknown terrorist by name, you have a President who has lost stature and a terrorist who has just gained stature.

The very act of negotiating grants parties equal status at the table. I am a world class terrorist. I just got the President of the United States to agree to negotiate with me man to man.

I’ll never buy off on that. Making some vile Satanic proxy a hero all over the Middle-East or throughout Asia is not my idea of limiting the power of terrorists.

[Enchante]

In Jan. 1939 Hitler spoke very publicly of “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” — this was a speech before the Reichstag, not merely some private letter unknown to most diplomats. Close to the same date he told the Swedish Ambassador that he would obliterate Poland if they did not accede to his demands (this was reported to Lord Halifax in Britain). Six weeks later Hitler obliterated Czechoslovakia, or what was left of it.

Pat Buchanan is the most dangerous kind of revisionist — not only can’t learn from the past but has to make up a fantasy past to suit his egregious biases...... perhaps some excuse might be attempted for those living through that time who could not open their eyes and who really believed that Hitler could be appeased short of some immense catastrophe, but in retrospect it is 100% obvious, as it was so obvious to Churchill at that time, how insatiable Hitler would be in his appetites for conquest, dominance and destruction of his ‘enemies’

Buchanan thinks Poland should have appeased Hitler with the Danzig corridor just as the Czechs were right (in his eyes) to accede to Britain and France carving up their country to “avoid war” — yet just 6 months after Chamberlain supposedly purchased “peace for our time” by dealing away the Sudetenland (and wrecking Czechoslovakia’s defense posture vs. Germany), Hitler carved up the rest of Czechoslovakia. How can Buchanan possibly claim that “negotiations” and a give-away over Danzig were going to appease Hitler?

---

In his speech before the Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler proclaims...

“In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the state and with it that of the whole nation and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevising of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

— Hitler speech before the Reichstag, Jan. 30, 1939 —

http://www.worldwar-2.net/prelude-to-war/prelude-to-war-index.htm

[rmlew]

I can’t figure out if Buchanan has literlaly become blinded by the suicidally stupid ideology of realpolitik that he ignores fact, or if his near pathological hatred of neocons makes him stupid.

[rmlew]

No, Mr. President, Negotiating and appeasement are not the same. Buchanan was correct in making this point. Mr. President, you, your father, and many Presidents before have negotiated with terrorists and terrorist supporting countries. Were you just trying to give us the "false comfort of appeasement"? Did all of you think "some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along"?
1. We were wrong in those cases.
2. Pat's rebutal on WW2 shows a clear disregard of the facts.

Some of you seem quite upset because you have a visceral dislike of Buchanan or an emotional tie to the President. Neither of these lead to valid points in an argument.
There are some Bushbots, but I'm not one of them. I debated for (thanks to the timely intervention of Scott McConnel) and voted for Pat in 2000. I am no fan of Jorge Arbusto's democratization delusion.
The simple fact is that Pat has lost it.

[KC_Conspirator]

If I saw Pat Buchanan, I would spit in his face.

[steve-b]

Hitler had not wanted war with Poland.

Yep, and Osama bin Laden does not want war with America.

[steve-b]

Where he is 'right' on domestic issues, it is often for the wrong reasons. If you go through his history of articles, you'll see that his many of his domestic stances are grounded in a belief that America is not a force for good, but of evil and his domestic approach is to protect us from ourselves and/or some sort of Israel control

Yep. He displays a consistent pattern of disdain for individual freedom and support for state control of culture -- no wonder he's so sympathetic to Islamic Fundamentalists.

[metesky]

Not to mention that just a few days before President Bush traveled to Israel, Obama fire one of his top foreign policy advisors when it became known that he had been meeting with leaders of Hamas, regularly.

Zactly! The key words here are "when it became known"... So the aid was fired not because he was meeting with Hamas, but because "it became known". This guy better never, never, never get within a mile of the gears of power.

[AndyJackson]

The simple fact is that Pat has lost it.

You and I have already debated this issue on another posting of this same article, and you deliberately failed then, and now, to understand rather than misrepresent Pat's essential point. The dangerous juju that you are putting about is that somehow, by refusing to negotiate with a mortal enemy, you can have your own way. Well, we didn't get our way with Hitler, did we? Instead, we had a WWII, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe for 50 years and tens of millions dead. And some of that was that we, the victors of WWI created Hitler and gave him a cause in the conditions imposed upon Germany. Pat is not wrong there; most honest historical assessments of the origins of WWII recognize that fact; and I did not even know that this point was in controversy any more. Pat has an interesting point about Danzig, Poland and Hitler, but instead of analyzing it you want to campaign on it.

In fact, you are a Bushbot, and, as McClellan said, you and your compatriots are constantly in campaign mode rather than governing mode. What are you running for? Bush is leaving in 6 months.

Part of your dissembling requires confusing "negotiation" and "appeasement." Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union. He did not appease them. Chamberlain appeased Hitler. He did not negotiate with him. Clear difference, a difference that Pat clearly makes in his article, and that Pat would not fail to note, because, whatever else you might say about Pat, he is not weak.

I already suggested that you to go and read Schelling, almost anything by him on strategic games, before spouting this ignorant attitude of yours, but you clearly have not. You and your kind want "victory" over Islamic fundamentalism. Well, what does such "victory" look like? Not one of the Bushbot WOT supporters can answer that question, and yet you cannot have a strategy until you know what you are trying to achieve. The way you and your kind talk about it can only be done through extermination, a "final solution" of the kind that even Hitler and Stalin could not carry out. If not, we are forced to seek the kind of accommodation with it that we achieved with the Soviet Union, which underlay the Regan strategy, "we win, they lose." You get there by remaining firm, and slowly bringing them along, which requires open engagement, which is negotiation. It requires give and take, which is in everyone's interest to avoid a final holocaust, but not just giving in.

And if you don't like being called a Bushbot, then starting thinking and stop campaigning, which you do by having reasoned debate with your interlocutors instead of calling them names.

[AndyJackson]

and Osama bin Laden does not want war with America

Actually, a lot of the Taliban did not want war with America and were very concerned about harboring Osama on just this point - they knew what it meant.

[AndyJackson]

blinded by the suicidally stupid ideology of realpolitik

This is an ignorant self-contradictory statement. Realpolitik is not ideology. Its foundation is that you avoid ideology and take the world for what it is, force without metaphysical overlays.

[AndyJackson]

Countries negotiate over many things including war and peace. There are no implications of legitimacy or legitimate claims, only an acceptance that the parties can do harm.

Exactly. And therefore, in a classic bargaining game, negotiating may provide an alternative in the interest of bot parties to the mutual immolation that can be implicit in refusing to negotiate, as happened in WWII, through refusal to negotiate, and as we avoided in the Cold War through negotiation.