"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."
Apparently the spectacle of a sitting U.S. President pulling a reductio ad Hitlerum against a political foe while in Israel was too much for Joe Biden, who completely lost it when contacted by phone about the remark:
“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... He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”
Other prominent Democrats (ok, pretty much all of them) were only slightly less colourful in their language as they piled on to defend Obama against the President's smear.
(BTW, yeah, I know - I'm posting a lot about U.S. politics. Sorry, but I'm finding the sight of America slowly returning to sanity after almost three decades of institutional neo-conservatism to be far more fascinating than watching our own sad excuse of a parliament as they fidget in their seats anxiously waiting for summer break to start.)
(Oh look - California's getting same-sex marriage!)
Harper had his own Godwin moment in the House this week too.
ReplyDelete"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939...the false comfort of appeasement"
What a complete ass.
In 1941 prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, the future Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, approached the Nazis to negotiate the establishment of a Jewish state in return for taking an active part in the war against the British on Germany's side. Shamir wanted the British out of Palestine, and as a leader of Lehi, a group which openly declared itself to be terrorist, Shamir was responsible for the 1944 assassination of Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, the 1948 assassination of the UN representative in the Middle East, and an assassination attempt against the British High Commissioner of Palestine.
Forty years later Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel, with a second term as PM from 1986 to 1992, at which point he made up his own list of who was a terrorist and who it would be wrong to negotiate with.
Sorry, but I'm finding the sight of America slowly returning to sanity after almost three decades of institutional neo-conservatism to be far more fascinating ...
ReplyDeleteHow will you feel if the results of the past year and the next few months result in the election of McCain in November?
I'm old enough to remember the excitement of working on the McGovern campaign in 1972. Those were exciting times. I was going to help Americans change their country for the better.
Oops. Didn't happen.
Alison-
ReplyDeleteWow. I did not know that. That's really disturbing. Thank you.
Larry -
I'm trying REALLY hard not to think about that possibility. And oddly enough I'm in the middle of reading 'All the President's Men' right now, so I'm getting a whole new education about that particular campaign (sorry, I was only eight).
I think the big difference here is that this election is about so much more than just the war, and that Obama is really more like Bobby Kennedy than McGovern or even McCarthy in terms of his broad grassroots support.
Don't get me wrong - I am the last person to ever underestimate the potential and oft realized stupidity of the American electorate. I learned that lesson four years ago. And eight years ago. And... well, almost every four years since 1980.
So yeah, I'm setting myself up for a big disappointment here, but I'm still an idealist at heart. I believe that somehow, somewhere, someday, a leader will emerge who will inspire the people to come together and abolish poverty, bring peace and save the planet.
Yeah, I know. I'm a schmuck.
Jennifer says,
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, I'm setting myself up for a big disappointment here, but I'm still an idealist at heart. I believe that somehow, somewhere, someday, a leader will emerge who will inspire the people to come together and abolish poverty, bring peace and save the planet.
Yeah, I know. I'm a schmuck.
Oh dear. I didn't say you were a schmuck.
If you really think that Barack Obama is that person then "idealist" is probably the correct term. :-)
Naaaaw... I was just kidding about the whole "saving the planet" thing.
ReplyDeleteAll I ask of a great leader is that they make their country and maybe the world a better place in some significant and lasting way. That kind of fundamental change has happened a few times just in the last century, but it does require that the people be ready and willing to make major changes in their lives and their attitudes. And for that they need inspiration.
I think Obama can inspire the same kind of positive change that Roosevelt, Kennedy and Trudeau did, but even more importantly, I think the American people are finally ready for it. I think they're finally starting to see where this road they've been on is leading, and they don't like it one bit.
All they need now is someone to show them a detour.
Jennifer says,
ReplyDeleteI think Obama can inspire the same kind of positive change that Roosevelt, Kennedy and Trudeau did ...
Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Trudeau were politicians. They knew how to work the system to effect change. They did not pretend that they were going to rise above politics and transform society by doing things differently in Washington (or Ottawa).
The last person who promised to do that was George Bush in 2000.
Don't forget that Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Trudeau had lots of enemies. That's what you expect when you try and change society. I'm suspicious of someone who thinks that you can make changes and have everyone love you at the same time.
We're getting into the issue of "how does transformative social change happen?" which is an incredibly complex question. The point I'm trying to make (obviously not well) is that it's not just about leadership - it's the confluence of a number of factors, some of which cam be pretty amorphous.
ReplyDeleteJust looking at those three examples: Roosevelt came in at a time when the consequences of bad economic policy and bad agricultural policy became suddenly and abundantly clear. Yes, he gave good speech and brought in policies that remedied the situation, but more importantly he completely changed the way people viewed the role of government. And the only reason he was able to do that was because people's consciences were aroused by the suffering of their fellow citizens.
Kennedy was slick, good looking, and had a hell of a speech writer. Unlike Roosevelt, he came in at a time of unprecedented affluence - for white America, at least. However, the Civil Rights movement, women entering the workforce, access to higher education, and a ton of other factors were conspiring to cause the post-war generation to expand their horizons and question the status-quo. Kennedy almost inadvertently provided them with a direction when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you" and started the Peace Corps. He did a few other things of course, but as a leader his main contribution to social change in the 60s was simply to inspire youth to become politically and socially active and engaged. And we all know where that went.
This is way longer than I wanted it to be, and I already wrote a long post about Trudeau and Bobby Kennedy that talks about this sort of stuff (and BTW points out that Trudeau had almost zero political experience when he became Prime Minister). But basically, no, I don't believe that Obama is going to 'save America'. I believe that America is on the cusp of some pretty radical changes regardless - socially, economically, environmentally - and that the excitement over Obama is a good sign that those changes will lead in a positive direction.
In fact, I think things might end up changing a little more radically than even Obama has in mind.
(I'm sorry - I know this really doesn't directly address your point. I'm just thinking out loud.)