Appeasement

"Chamberlain's deal with Hitler has become shorthand for naive, weak leadership." Newsweek, June 23, 2008 It was George Bush who raised the specte...

Back in May, President Bush traveled to Israel's Knesset to deliver a speech that equated negotiations with modern terror-sponsoring states to World W...

On the surface, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a prisoner swap deal between Hezbollah and Israel provide a glimmer of hope for a period of tranquility between the conflicting parties.

Refusing to communicate simply hobbles your foreign policy. We never stopped talking to the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- if we hadn't, probably none of us would be alive to have this discussion.

In Buddhism, the notion of balance is central. Over the Bush years, there has been a damaging drift toward absolutism. You're with us or against us, diplomacy is appeasement, tax cuts forever, the axis of evil, and markets always work best (and government, worst).

President George W. Bush, asked in a press conference why Republicans in the House and Senate are increasingly defying him, proven by the fact that do...

The paper makes the very important point that when Bush's appeasement attack was directed not just against Obama, but the leadership of the Jewish state of Israel as well.

Criticism of Senator Barack Obama's stated willingness to engage American's adversaries and enemies has been, like so much else, reduced in this campa...

Addressing Israeli lawmakers last week, Bush slandered a giant of the U.S. Senate: William E. Borah. The six-term Republican senator from Idaho cannot hit back against Bush's smear -- he's been dead since 1940.

John McCain "can't win" if he's seen as "the Bush third term" -- this, from a Republican?

Bush, Cheney, and their band of neoconservative outlaws who led us into one catastrophic war and might lead us into another are pleased to have these faith-based cheerleaders on the sidelines.

When you are deciding whether to listen to a Republican when they talk about Democrats as "appeasers," consider the story of Oliver North.

Palestinians oppressed by Israeli settlers and looking anywhere they can for help are neither with the United States nor against us. If we treat them as enemies, they may well become enemies.

McCain can argue he was talking about Ahmadinejad, since Obama does want to meet with Iran...but how did he get to Iran without even mentioning the country by name?

John McCain had to choose between supporting his party's president or denouncing his comments as the sort of hostile divisiveness he had himself just denounced. He chose to support Bush.

This week, John McCain and the truth parted ways again, this time citing irreconcilable differences - i.e. the fact that the truth regularly exposes the dissembling, say-anything-to-get-elected hack McCain has become. His attacks on Barack Obama's willingness to confront the leaders of Iran at the negotiating table, and his piling on agreement with President Bush's loathsome attempt to link Obama to Nazi appeasers, were shown to be nothing more than hypocritical political posturing by Jamie Rubin. The McCain camp's response was to attack the messenger (hmm, where have I seen that before?) and attempt to confuse the issue. So here's what we can expect from now until November from McCain: attack the truth tellers and pretend it's 2013.

Borah Peak, at 12,662 feet high, is the highest point in Idaho. [That may sound like a strange place to begin this column, but please bear with me.] I...

President Bush has made so many utterly dumb statements during his eight years in office that K-Tel could compile a best-selling greatest-hits album. ...

The AP reports on Obama's swift and forceful response to Bush and McCain's criticism of his foreign policy approach: Barack Obama laid into John McCa...

Whenever conservatives can't win an argument on the merits, they attack some real or perceived enemy as Hitler. And anyone who tries to resolve conflict short of more war is Chamberlain.

If you want to resolve conflicts you have to talk... sometimes on the QT, sometimes through the media, sometimes face to face. But in the end you talk.

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.