I tend to disagree with Beehner's entire premise. We did have a lot of clout and respect amongst the Arab and Islamic nations following World War One. But a good deal of that went down the drain after we recognized and supported Israel. Even more when we, under Truman, installed the Shah in Iran. Had we handled Gulf War One better, such as backing up the Shiites in toppling Saddam, the world might be a much different place. The same could be said if Carter had handled the fall of the Shah better.
As for Hamas and Hezbollah, both have supporters here in America now. There have been some recent arrests involving illegal cigarette trafficking which help fund these groups. Here in the Metro Detroit area, there is even some violence between various factions who live here, such as Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. It doesn't get much press, but it is happening.
Frankly, I think it's high time we convert to a hydrogen-economy and get off the petroleum merry-go-round once and for all. Then we can just bail out of the whole region and let them solve their own problems. Too many people there hate us, and it's just not Bush. They hate us because of Britney Spears and MacDonalds. Our way of life just offends them.
The Case for 'Appeasement'
The storm over President Bush's "appeasement" remarks in Israel misses the point. No, we should not appease, engage, or give shoulder rubs to Islamist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. But wishing they would go away, while arming their enemies has gotten us nowhere.
Plus, haven't we, to some degree, appeased disgruntled Sunnis in what was known as the Sunni triangle? Hasn't our Neville Chamberlain-like approach worked there, with varying degrees of success? When Robert Gates talks about sitting down with his Iranian counterparts, isn't that appeasement -- assuming at least that negotiation is meant to make the other side less mad at you?
I would take it one step further. Rather than just sit down and say hello to these chaps we don't like in the region, I say we should outright support them.
Say what? Yes, by railing against these groups, Palestinians and Lebanese voters are probably thinking: If Americans are against them, by golly they must be doing something right. After all, Americans were for Fatah, and look how corrupt that organization turned out to be! Ditto President Musharraf. Our support for President Maliki in Iraq has not exactly helped his standing among everyday Iraqis. Maybe if we start backing Moqtada al-Sadr, the ranks of the Mahdi Army would begin to thin out.
Let's face it: The United States still has some leverage to influence things in the Muslim world, but it's the opposite kind of leverage you might expect. A U.S. endorsement of a political party is the kiss of death. We are like Al Gore and the cover of Sports Illustrated wrapped into one -- our support means instant failure. That is why no Iranian NGO dares accept money (at least not through third channels) from the U.S. State Department -- it's seen as tainted. And it is. We have a regime-change agenda in that country.
Of course, were the United States to start blindly supporting radical Islamist groups, some might catch on. Secularists and moderates might feel alienated and left to wonder: What gives? Or, suddenly there would be this surge of pro-Americanism in that part of the world and we'd be left with parties in power we can't stand and Israel would probably disown us.
I throw this suggestion out there not as a serious one but just to highlight the bind American policymakers are in. To blindly rail against your enemies, or lump them all in the same bag of Osama bin Laden-like evildoers, is moronic and bad policy. Obama is right to want to engage -- and dare I say -- appease some elements within these groups. But if he really wanted to screw them, he would outright endorse them.
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We did not install the Shah, he succeeded his father in 1941. Of course, that also means that his installation did not take place under Truman who was not even Vice President in 1941.
If you can't get your basic facts straight, why should anyone listen to you?
When did Hamas attack the U.S.? Never. How many Americans have been killed by Hamas? None. How many Israelis were killed by any Palestinian, Hamas or otherwise, in 2007? 13. In 2006: 17. 30 Israelis dead in a two year period, killed by a Palestinian. Israel killed approximately 1000 Palestinians during that same time period.
Number of gang members in U.S. as of 2007? 800,000. Murders: 17,000. Women viciously attacked in their homes in 2006 and 2007 in the U.S.: 6 million. And 30 dead Israelis.
When will these politicians stop acting as if they are running for President of Israel. Or Iraq. I want to know what they plan to do for the people of this country? George W. Bush goes to israel and says how much he loves them. Of course he gave them $10 billion of my money last year alone, so I guess they love him too. But he's left a broad path of destruction here in the U.S., so I'm not really interesting in hearing about how everybody in Israel is doing fine. We're not doing fine here in the U.S. If these candidates don't start focusing on the people of the U.S., we need to throw them all out.
Read Human Rights Watch:
http://hrw.org/englishwr2k8/docs/2008/01/31/isrlpa17596.htm
In 2007, for the first time since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, more Palestinians died as a result of internal Palestinian fighting than from Israeli attacks. Palestinian armed groups, rival security forces, and powerful clans continue armed attacks on one another. At this writing, 318 Palestinians, including many civilians, had died in such fighting in 2007, most of them in Gaza.
By far the worst round of fighting broke out in June 2007 and left 161 Palestinians dead, including 41 civilians. By the end of the eight-day battle, Hamas had taken full control of the Gaza Strip. Both sides engaged in serious violations of international humanitarian law, such as torturing and summarily executing captured and incapacitated fighters, including inside hospitals; unnecessarily endangering civilians by deploying in populated areas during the fighting; and blocking the access of medical teams to injured persons.
Hamas was created with the support of Israel and the U.S. government years ago to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).Hamas was democratically by the Palestinian people. The reason Israel and their supporters refuse to deal with Hamas is because they will not sell out the Palestinian people. Hamas is not going to go away. Hamas won an election Bushco insisted on having.
I want to know why Israel is allowed to lay waste to every international law and convention without criticism and their "enemies" are not entitled to raise a hand in their own defense?
I want to know why each year US aid to Israel gives $1500.00 per capita while cutting programs in the US due to "funding"? Why on earth are American taxpayers forced to give billions of dollars yearly to Israel when our own people are homeless or soon to be, have no jobs, and no healthcare?There is no justification for forcing the U.S. public to pay for health care,education, and housing for the Israelis while our own people go without.
I want to know why media shields us from Israeli atrocities? The rest of the world believes that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is Nazi-like in many respects.
I want to know why it's a damn shame that American politicians are selected, not on their commitment to the best interests of America, but by vowing to put the interests of a foreign nation, Israel, first ?
Hmm, BJTabor, how about you go back and check your notes! "To get":
Present tense: getting
Past tense: got
Past participle: got/gotten (they are interchangeable).
Hopefully next time you will do your own work before criticizing others'. We are here to COMMUNICATE and as far as you understand others' points, grammatical or spelling mistakes do not matter.
Deparis
Look! For you obsessive Obama supporters; especially those that are young! I am extremely cognizant of the fact that Barrack has shared an experience as a young man that I experienced in similar genre among urban proletariat of all skin colors and ethnic backgrounds and he apparently learned the same lessons as an exceptionally intelligent young educated young lawyer regarding those folks as I had experienced!
As I told my friend Gene Washington by a-mail :my heart is with Hillary but my brain is with Obama! As a street politician I have no doubt that he learned the same lessons emanating from the halls of Congress that had been ringing in the ears of these folks since the civil war! Change is absolutely necessary in Washington! But I believe Hillary is capable of such change even if it means destroying the "good old boy network" that is Bills life blood!
In addition it would be the height of hypocrisy for anyone to advocate change and ignore a change in male perception of the female role in our American tribe! If this is ignored and placed on the back burner of American priority of change Mr. Obama and his surrogates have turned their back on an entire generation of Americans and he will find it difficult to form a plurality of political support!
Destroy the "good old boy" network? She seems to be trying very hard to show that she IS a good old boy. Trying to show that she is the American Margaret Thatcher, no different from any male politician only more macho. Sorry, I keep thinking of that scene in "All of Me" where Lily Tomlin, inhabiting Steve Martin's body, tries to "act like a man".
Listening to Matthews' "eviscerate" James by asking, repeatedly, "what did Chamberlain do?" I sat wondering, "I've read 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I've read a number of histories of WWII, and - what DID Chamberlain ACTUALLY "do?" Hmmm. Well, I remember, from my reading, he went to "negotiate with Hitler" and returned with an "agreement" and was then a pariah in the eyes of history when Hitler violated the agreement and continued invading his neighbors, bringing on WWII. But, when Matthews sat there smugly letting this guy hang out to dry, I thought "I wonder if Chris Matthews has read as much about the subject as I have, or if he recently brushed up on the particulars subsequent to Bush's speech to the Knesset." Matthews berated James that "appeasement is GIVING SOMETHING AWAY" in this case, a part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, that Hitler and Germany considered to be ethnically German. Chamberlain agreed. Then Hitler took all of Czechoslovakia, then Poland, and Chamberlain angrily felt betrayed, and declared war on Germany. There was NO consensus for war with Germany prior to that moment - France was not mobilizing troops and had zero interest in war, The Soviet Union had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany, the U.S. was decidedly isolationist - in short, it WAS NOT so black and white - "stop him now (Hitler) and we avoid a wider war." That's revisionist history, 20/20 hindsight, call it what you will.
No, it's not revisionist history to call Chamberlain an "appeaser" since there was a policy called appeasement and the conservatives in Britain applied pressure on the French to have it win out. There's a few other things that make this "agreement" a sham from the getgo, namely that Czechoslovakia was not even invited to the conference that determined its fate. Neither was Stalin. It was a stacked deck. Chamberlain had planned on giving stuff away.
You also need to keep your chronology in order. The Nonaggression pact is from the summer of 1939 and the Munich agreement was September 1938. Your sloppiness suggests that the appeasers were trying to avoid war because they knew the alliances. Also, keep in mind that appeasement did not begin in 1938, though Munich represents the low point. Western Europe looked the other way when Italy and Germany supported Franco, looked the other way when Germany remilitarized the Rhineland and looked the other way when the Anschluss took place earlier in '38. The only thing Britain did do was condemn the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and ensure the French and Italians fractured their relationship, sending Mussolini into Hitler's camp, thus making Anschluss possible, since only Mussolini had dared to challenge Hitler in the 30s.
My chronology is right, and, I never said Chamberlain wasn't an appeaser. He was. What I suggested was there was NO consensus for war before Hitler invaded Poland. What I suggested was the whole period was NOT black and white, and Chamberlain was greeted with overwhelming support in Britain when he returned from Munich (look it up), Stalin was playing both sides of the fence and only became our ally AFTER Hitler invaded The Soviet Union. 20 million people died in WWI, and 20 million were casualties. There WAS an agreement between France, Britain and The Soviet Union to check any militarism in Germany, BUT, the First World War had totally exhausted ANY chance of pre-emptive action from any of the three. And the argument that Mein Kampf foretold Hitler's plans is bogus. A lot of prisoners write stuff in jail. Very few, if any, carry it out, on the world stage. Hitler was viewed as an eccentric semi-nut who was up to no good, but, the horrors of what he did were not forseen. They could not have been, practically speaking, avoided. The proof is - they weren't. "peace in our time," late summer, '38, Non-aggression pact, late summer '39, Hitler invades Poland September 1st, 1939. THEN and only then, world war.
You have to remember, the whole world was still recovering from WWI, where 20 million people had died - there was NO consensus for war in the mid 1930s. The Versailles treaty had humiliated Germany after WWI and Hitler's rise was a direct result of a humiliated nation mesmerized by a fiery nationalistic leader, who was a former WWI soldier on the losing side, a failed artist, and then an increasingly hard nosed politician, who spent time in jail for his subversive actions, and finally strong-armed his way to the top. He could certainly have been viewed at the time as a threat, but this "we should have stopped him, we knew all along" simply doesn't square with the facts. Hitler was mad. He became increasingly unhinged as the war progressed. No one could have predicted this. It is not in ANY way justifying what he did - which was unspeakable, but ANY open minded reading of history at the time suggests that WWII was probably inevitable - a "necessary war" in response to a growing aggressor in Hitler, who then joined forces with a fanatic, expansionist Japan to unleash the worst calamity in the history of the world.
No one wanted to know, hence they didn't read Mein Kampf. The Conservatives liked Hitler too much as a check on Stalin to pay attention. But "inevitable" is a big historical problem. As of when? You saying Weimar never had a chance? Tell that to Gustav Stresemann. Maybe if he hadn't died (or Hindenburg even), things would have looked a lot different.
Maybe, schmaybe. What happened is what happened. "No one wanted to know." Exactly. It took Hitler invading Poland for the world to be FORCED into action, and the U.S., which ended up tipping the balance to victory (as in WWI) would NOT get involved until Pearl Harbor. The U.S. wanted NO part of it, until it was forced to act. THAT'S how "necessary wars" begin. An aggressor commits a terrible violation of another nation, an attack, THEN, and only then, AFTER absorbing the blow, you react. We've had "necessary wars" and others, such as the one we're in now in Iraq. You're playing fast and loose with speculation and the facts.
Chamberlain, by the way, was well regarded in the British government AFTER Britain entered the war, and remained in the government in a concerted effort to do all he could to avenge Hitler's betrayal of the Munich agreement. WWII was a series of events no one could have truly foreseen and responded to with the required force at the time, but, eventually, Hitler and Japan were decimated.
Obama does not strike me as naive. The sheer audacity of George Bush, having blundered so predictably (talk about a catastrophe that could have been foreseen!), causing the deaths of tens of thousands, so FAR, to suggest Obama would "appease" terrorist organizations - in a way reminiscent of what Chamberlain was tagged with regarding Hitler and WWII - is ignorance personified. Remember - Barack Obama hasn't gotten anyone KILLED by invading the WRONG country in response to 9/11 - arguably the greatest foreign policy disaster in the HISTORY of this nation. Bush ought to be frog-marched out of the White House, along with all his arrogant, and tragically incompetent supporters, and put in JAIL - where he belongs. THAT'S shutting down an aggressor.
Comments:
In the '30s, the majority of the civilian population was deeply opposed to the commencement of hostilities. The vast losses of WW I had bled France white, obliterating an entire generation. In many circles, Hitler was admired. He was viewed as having freed Germany from the grip of a withering depression and imminent social collapse. To the world's elite, he was a staunch anti-Bolshevik and a formidable foe of its "degenerate" ideas.
Hitler's disdain for France was palpable and he held the French accountable for the punitive terms comprising the "Peace of Versailles". Despite his thirst for revenge, Hitler's quick conquest did not spell total disaster for the French. Though occupied, the country was neither decimated or sacked, as Hitler consider the French a somewhat inferior, though a talented and highly civilized foe.
The British, Hitler actually admired. His reluctance, and there is no other word for it, to decimate the BEF at Dunkirk, allowing the beleaguered English army to escape en mass, can be viewed only as an act of contrition. Hitler had no yearning for the British Isles, and was astounded to find he could not reach an accommodation with Churchill's government.
I disagree however that his murderous intentions could not have possibly been discerned from the beginning. He made it clear in "Mein Kampf" his intention to seize the vast agricultural lands of Czechoslovakia, Poland and the eastern stepps, eradicating or enslaving undesirable populations and repopulating the area with increasing numbers of Nordic Aryans.
He wrote Mein Kampf in jail as a failed political radical with zero future on a national level. No one gave it a thought until it was too late. Again, the proof is in what happened, not what you speculate SHOULD have happened.
These feelings were typically among conservatives who either didn't mind the anti-Semitism or looked the other way.
Just a minor little grammatical point: the past participle of the verb 'get' is 'got', not 'gotten'.
As I understand it, 'got' is American and 'gotten' is British.
You keep insisting! I see that you did some work, very good. Now, tell me where on earth people speak "American" or "British".
With no disrespect,
Deparis
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Posted May 16, 2008 | 10:00 AM (EST)