Obama's appeasement style
There is much more.Spin doctors were relabeled "strategists" in the early 1990s. And as Mark Steyn wrote last week in National Review, "Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies."
The latest attitude to be flouted as policy is indignation. Specifically, Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama's furious indignation at President George W. Bush's address before the Knesset last week where he celebrated Israel's 60th anniversary and extolled the US's alliance with Israel. Beyond praising the Jewish people's 4,000 year-old devotion to the Land of Israel and to liberty, Bush used the speech to warn against those who think that Iran and its terror proxies can simply be wished away through appeasement.
As the president put it, "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."
To Israeli ears, Bush's words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.
The only strong reaction that Bush's remarks provoked in Israel was relief. In spite of the Bush administration's own participation in the six-party talks with North Korea, its support for the EU-3's feckless discussions with the mullahs, its paralysis in the face of Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon, and its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state run by Fatah terrorists dedicated to Israel's destruction, at the very least, standing before the Knesset, Bush effectively pledged not to allow Iran to acquire the means to conduct a new Holocaust.
From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama's reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.
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I think that Obama at least owes us an explanation of his ingenious argument that will persuade Iran and its proxies they have been wrong. But wait, hasn't he already given that away by saying they have legitimate grievances? Just what are those legitimate grievances? Or is this just rhetoric to get in the door? At this point Hezballah has no legitimate purpose for even existing as an armed militia. What is it resisting? Likewise Hamas is governing unoccupied Gaza and having no Israelis to resist, launches rockets into Israel. What is legitimate about this cause?
If Obama does not think their collective desire for the destruction of Israel is legitimate, what does he propose that by talking with them will make them realize they are wrong? The Iranians and their proxies have always had an attitude that they did not want a deal with us, they wanted to destroy us. What are the secret words that Obama has that will change that attitude. Can he persuade them to stop being religious bigots?
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