George W. Bush and "Appeasement"
George W. Bush's remarks before the Israeli Knesset, where he charged Barack Obama with "Appeasement" for seeking diplomatic alternatives to war with Iran shows that despite his abysmal approval ratings and lame duck status he is going to insert himself into the politics of 2008. That might be a good thing for the Democrats.
Obama's call for negotiations with Iran has been welcomed by governments throughout the world and follows the advice of the conservative "Iraq Study Group" headed by Lee Hamilton and James Baker. How that stance constitutes "Appeasement" of any nation or any leader is anybody's guess.
I am so sick of hearing the "Appeasement" argument trotted out whenever some right-wing blowhard wants to sound "tough" and dismiss diplomacy no matter how badly the historical context screams out for it. Lyndon Johnson used "Appeasement" to justify standing "tough" in Vietnam with disastrous results. Now Bush repeated this old canard to try to politically isolate anyone who doesn't see the world through his jaundiced eyes. John McCain naturally agrees with Bush and vowed never to talk to U.S. adversaries unless they totally capitulate to U.S. demands ahead of time.
Like the old comic strip character, "Pogo," said during the Vietnam War: "We have seen the enemy, and it is us."
During the last week of September 1938, when the leaders of two democracies, Edouard Daladier of France and Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, met in Munich with two fascist dictators, Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of Germany, the goal was to push Hitler east. Hitler's intentions were clear. He sought "Lebensraum" in Eastern Europe and considered the Slavs an inferior race to his own and the Bolsheviks the biggest single threat to Western Civilization. Hitler wished to absorb into the German Reich the largely German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, a nation carved out by the Versailles Treaty after Germany's defeat in World War One. The hyper-nationalist, flag-waving, right-wing Nazi regime in Berlin never accepted Czechoslovakia's legitimacy.
Hitler's call for seizing the Sudetenland was THE classic "stab-in-the-back" argument: the civilian diplomats who "betrayed" Germany at the end of WWI were all left-liberal "traitors" who sold out the nation at Versailles. (We hear the same argument from our own right-wing revisionists of the Vietnam War.) All Hitler was doing, in his view, was restoring what rightfully belonged to Germany.
Severely weakened by the Great Depression and in no position to make military threats, Chamberlain and Daladier hoped to push Hitler's ambitions eastward. The one unifying belief all four leaders shared was their fanatical hatred of the Soviet Union and anything remotely related to International Communism. A strong and well-armed Nazi regime in Central Europe, they believed, was a necessary buffer to Soviet power. And with their own domestic economic crises and their labor unions going communist, France and England focused their attention not on the threat of fascism but on the growing influence of the Soviet Union. (Their positions on the Spanish Civil War bear this fact out.)
France and England hoped Germany would spark a shooting war with the Soviet Union and then they could sit back and watch the fascists and communists tear each other apart. It didn't work out that way.
If Chamberlain and Daladier could negotiate with Hitler and Mussolini, why couldn't they also talk to Josef Stalin? Stalin was interested in resurrecting some form of the old "Triple Entente" alliance system that attempted to box in Germany in the years leading up to World War One. It might have been a long shot, but had France and England been open to including Russia in the negotiations Germany might have been stuck with an instant two-front war if it invaded any of its neighbors, east or west. German power might have been checked. As it turned out, after June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union ended up being allied with France and England anyway (and with the United States after December 7, 1941), so maybe the whole damn bloody thing could have been avoided with some creative diplomacy. That's the real lesson of "Appeasement" and it is the opposite of what the Right Wing says it is.
I'm only pointing out that there was a historical context to the 1938 Munich deal that gets lost in the din of contemporary saber rattlers.
This piece of 20th Century "history," wholly denuded of its context, has been the most abused "lesson" of World War Two. Those who want to use military violence always justify their actions by smearing those who oppose them as "Appeasers." Every U.S. president since Harry Truman has used this argument in one form or another.
But "history" also shows quite clearly that sometimes negotiations and diplomacy are much smarter and far less dangerous avenues of settling international disputes than always reflexively reaching for the guns and the cruise missiles.
What's needed in the Middle East is a comprehensive Non-Aggression Pact that includes all of the major players: the EU, Russia, Israel, Iran, Muslim states outside the region, the United States, the Arab League, etc. The region must be a nuclear-free zone and any act of military aggression must be outlawed by mutual security agreements, and not dictated by the United States, which under Bush has lost its credibility as an honest broker. The US must redeploy its troops out of Iraq and some kind of just settlement must be negotiated between Israel and Palestine. More wars and attacks and concrete walls and occupations and bombings and terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations and check points are doomed to failure. Negotiations and diplomacy must take over where military violence has failed.
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When Bush equates talking with an adversary or enemy to appeasement, what he's really saying is that he doesn't trust himself not to give away the store -- that if he meets with Ahmedinejad, he'll somehow be tricked or hypnotized into making all sorts of harmful concessions. Which in Bush's case might in fact be true. But not in the case of a leader who is not a mental midget -- someone with intelligence and real toughness, like Barack Obama.
ever see the Dave Caghpelle skit where he wonders if Bush would give a way the store during ngotiations so he can leave the meetign to get high?
No but it sounds perfect. Someone should resurrect it.
this what we get when we put a cowboy in in the whit house
The only people truly against opening dialogues with Iran, North Korea, etc. are the CHICKENHAWKS. Notice how these people talk WAR and VIOLENCE at the drop of a hat, but none of them are--or have been--in UNIFORM. BULLIES and COWARDS fill the ranks of the Republican Party and the way to diminish their influence is TO STAND UP TO THESE BULLIES AND COWARDS AND SHOW THEY FOR WHAT THEY ARE!
The only people truly against opening dialogues with Iran, North Korea, etc. at the CHICKENHAWKS. Notice how these people talk WAR and VIOLENCE at the drop of a hat, but none of them are--or have been--in UNIFORM. BULLIES and COWARDS fill the ranks of the Republican Party and the way to diminish their influence is TO STAND UP TO THESE BULLIES AND COWARDS AND SHOW THEY FOR WHAT THEY ARE!
Furthermore, the appeasement policies of England and France in the late days before WWII were reasonable attempts to make Hitler happy, until he started to INVADE OTHER COUNTRIES!!! Tell me, excepting only Iraq during the 1980s, when has Iran EVER tried to invade and take over other countries??? Oh, I'm sorry, that's the US!!
You talk with your enemies but you dont cave in to them.Thats what France and Great Britain did and it was Iraq that invaded Iran I believed that Iran has not attacked another country in over 200 years.
Directly at least...
The Iran - Iraq war in the 80s, moreover, was a USSR - USA war by proxy.
President Bush demeans himself and this country daily with remarks like these. This man has demeaned the office of the President with his off the cuff remarks and his lack of historical knowledge. He looks like a fool when he calls Obama or anyone else for that matter a Nazi appeaser, especially when his grandfather actually was one.
Thank you, President Bush.
Your comments were embarrassing, ill-informed and shameful. Please continue to "do your thing." Please remind America of why the Republican leadership is on life support and why your approval rating is the lowest in modern history.
If McCain keeps embracing this knucklehead's ridiculous positions, this election will turn into a blowout.
The fact is, by the time of the Munich meetings, Hitler had already seized part of France ( a part lost in WWI), invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia and had begun moving Jews into ghettos with a view towards their total extermination. Iran has not invaded anyone. They have supported various Shia militias in Iraq, some of whom we actually claim to support. They have helped train Hezbollah and provided them with financial support and armaments. They have attempted to arm Hamas. Whatever their nefarious activities, they do not come close to the level of evil that Hitler reached long before Chamberlain's appeasement. In Iran Jews live prosperous lives. They are not forced to live in ghettos. Though Iran does pursue policies counter to America's interests, we have aided them unwittingly by our invasion of Iraq. To successfully execute a foreign policy we must put the problems of the world in clear perspective and not lump all bad actors into one category. That breeds misunderstanding and more hatred and violence.
I apologize if I'm wrong but I think at the time of the Chamberlain/Hitler 'summit' that Hitler was then still entertaining (oh, that's an ugly construct) the idea of Madagascar as the "solution" to the Jewish "problem". (Sorry for all the " "'s. It would take too many words to say what many already know.) The Wannsee conference (though surely preceded by executive decisions and/or assumed wishes - see "Working toward the Fuhrer" mentioned by Kershaw.) didn't occur until 1942. This is not to deny Hitler's murderous intent.
Differ in details, and you really have to understand the whole historical, economic and cultural situation that the Munich Agreement rose out of.
But I think the argument is a good one.
Bluntly, ideology blinded Britain and France to the threat to their very survival as independent countries posed by Nazi Germany. Yes the Soviet Union posed a threat too, but as the article said, it could have been contained, probably in a traditional "balance of power" scheme.
The SU turned out to be less of a threat than thought. The SU"s ideology was terrible too, but it was alien to the likes of Chamberlain and Daladier and most other European politicians of that era so it was regarded as the greater threat.
In any case, comparing either the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany to present-day Iran is absurd (egregious NYT hack makes the Soviet comparison- return of the Cold War with Mahmoud playing Stalin!). There is yet another remarkable piece of historical deceit attributable to the Bush Administration- painting Iran and Iraq, mortal enemies, as an "Axis of Evil."
The phrase conjures up that WWII buzz that Rumsfeld's "message force multipliers" hit the American public with. It created an opening for the "appeasement" meme to be used on the hapless opposition. If you want to flush $3 trillion down the toilet without gaining anything of note, that is certainly the way to sell it to our gullible nation.
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