Teddy… »
« E.P.A.
‘bad man’…

Posted on Tuesday 20 May 2008

… OBAMA’S RESPONSE to Bush’s speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.

Obama and his supporters argue that seeking to ease Iranian belligerence by conducting negotiations and offering military, technological, military and financial concessions to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who refers to Israel as pestilence, daily threatens the Jewish state with destruction, and calls for the eradication of the US while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago is not appeasement. Indeed, Obama claims that conducting direct face-to-face negotiations with the likes of Ahmadinejad is the right way to be "tough"…

But is this true? Obama recalls that US presidents have often conducted negotiations with their country’s enemies and done so to the US’s advantage. And this is true enough. President John F. Kennedy essentially appeased the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when he offered to remove US nuclear warheads from Turkey in exchange for the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba.

But there are many differences between what Kennedy did and what Obama is proposing. Kennedy’s offer to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was made secretly. And the terms of the deal stipulated that if its existence was revealed, the US offer would be cancelled. More importantly, Khrushchev was open to a deal and was ready to give up the Cuban nuclear program. And – most importantly of all – Kennedy deployed military forces and went to the brink of war to make the alternatives to negotiation credible…

But even if Obama and his supporters were right and negotiating with the ayatollahs was not by its nature an act of appeasement, the question remains whether it would be possible to reach a deal with them that would not endanger US interests or US allies a la Neville Chamberlain at Munich…
I find this article in the Jerusalem Post infuriating. Simply infuriating. First, if she’s right, talking to Iran will simply be a waste of time. Like our bonehead President, she equates talking with appeasing, like we don’t have the good sense to know when we’re being offered a bum deal. But it’s infuriating anyway. Our business and Presidential Election is our business and Presidential Election. We know the American Jewish vote slid across the aisle when the Neoconservatives rose to power. We know that it’s going to be a block vote for McCain. But we sure have had enough of the constant monomaniacal analysis that comes our way. "Ms. Glick, how about saying ‘thanks’ by staying out of our business."

I expect that what she’s worried about is that we won’t support Israel’s aggressive invasion of the Palestinian territory for settlements – that Obama might see that as negotiable. I know I see it as nothing but the aggressive invasion of another country. Not supporting imperial pugalism is hardly appeasment…

This is President Bush’s "Saddam Hussein is a bad man" argument. So is Bush. So is Ahmadinejad. So is Israel. So is Caroline Glick. My definition of a bad man is simple – someone who only sees one solution, War and Hatred…

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.