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Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
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Saturday, May 17, 2008
If the shoe fits...whine about it
The funniest political story this week has been the umbrage that Democrats have taken about Bush giving a speech to the Knesset in which he spoke out against appeasement of terrorist groups. Ah, Bush talks about appeasers, the Democrats scream, he must be discussing Barack Obama!
The party whose Speaker of the House traveled to Syria and proclaimed that the road to peace went through Damascus and whose former president recently met with the leader of Hamas and whose prospective presidential nominee proclaimed proudly that he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela heard the mention of appeasement and realized that the shoe fit and they were being forced to wear it. As the Wall Street Journal writes today,Mr. Obama asserted again yesterday that he will not meet with terrorists. He is, however, willing to meet with Iran or Syria. Virtually no serious person disputes that Iran has shipped weaponry to terrorists in Iraq and that Syria has provided safe haven to these terrorists and let them cross from Syria into Iraq. In turn, these jihadists have killed U.S. soldiers. At a minimum, one might expect that ceasing this lethal activity would be a "precondition" before committing the office of the presidency to meet with either.Sure, Obama won't meet with terrorists, but he'll meet with the sponsors and bankrollers of terrorists.
Mark Steyn notes that Obama has a tendency to turn what other people say into comments about him whether he is mentioned or not."That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."How to deal with these terror sponsors and their terror franchises is the essential question in our foreign policy for today and the coming era.
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies.This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:Obama would have had a much stronger argument if he'd attacked Bush for the lack of accomplishments in dealing with Iran and the fact that Iran is going to be the next president's problem. Just this month, we've seen Syria reassert itself in Lebanon. For all his fine rhetoric, what has been the result? The WSJ writes,
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.These columns have regularly criticized the current President and Secretary of State for failing to execute any discernible policy to stop the participation of these two state sponsors of terror in causing U.S. casualties in Iraq. This is the real mismatch between Mr. Bush's rhetoric and record, and where Senator Obama, if he chose, could hit hard. We doubt he will.Peter Wehner is exactly right when he ridicules Obama for providing a distraction from the debate about foreign policy.
The Bush Administration has finessed the Iran nuclear problem by handing it to the E3/EU "process" – taken nowhere by the world's top diplomatic talkers from France, Germany and the U.K. For two years, Condoleezza Rice's State Department has played footsie with whomever speaks for Iran, to no effect. For either Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi to suggest that they know better how to talk Iran's mullahs into an acceptable deal is, to put it gently, grandstanding.
Leaving no argument unturned, Democrats have reached back to Richard Nixon's trip to China and Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the Soviet Union as evidence that Republican Presidents "talk to the enemy." Put it this way: The day Iran brings forth a Chou Enlai and Syria a Mikhail Gorbachev, sure, give them a call.If Obama believes the president’s appeasement formulation was wrong, fine; let him make a substantive argument for why that’s the case. And if he wants to present a careful argument for why as president he would meet without preconditions with the leader of not only Iran but also with the leaders of Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, all in his first year, that’s fine, too. In fact, it would be a welcome addition to the presidential debate. But for Obama to lash out in the manner he has is silly and unbecoming.Instead of whining about being tagged as appeasers, when it's not even clear that Bush was talking about Obama, the Democrats could have hit Bush about that gap between his rhetoric and what we're actually seeing in the Middle East.
What is driving this response? Probably the belief by Obama that he’s vulnerable to being portrayed as weak on national security matters and he wants to prove that he can’t be “swift-boated.” But Obama’s response will achieve neither aim and, in fact, it makes Obama look thin-skinned, a bit rattled, and prickly. Indeed, Obama’s response seems so 1990s. His words and the words of the campaign could have come straight from the lips of Paul Begala or other former Clinton attack dogs.
Obama and the Democrat’s DefCon 1 response to the president’s speech to the Knesset is a perfect illustration of the kind of tiresome “old politics” we really don’t need. The early media reports I heard of Bush’s speech didn’t even mention the appeasement line; it was only after Obama’s campaign and other Democrats exploded in (manufactured) fury that it became a political issue at all. Or, perhaps more accurately, a “distraction.” Which is exactly what I thought Obama was trying to move us away from.
The problem remains that there are no easy answers for how to deal with Iran. Talking to them won't work. Heck, the Europeans have been talking to them for years and the Iranians have proceeded apace with sponsoring attacks in Iraq and supporting Hezbollah and Syria in Lebanon. We've been negotiating for years with North Korea and using a multilateral approach and the North Koreans were still helping Syria to build a nuclear facility. There are no good options. As usual, the new president will be faced with choosing the least bad option and seeing what that would accomplish. They seem to think that the whole purpose of foreign policy is to talk with our enemies. Bush rightly pointed out that talking to these guys will accomplish nothing. The question Obama and McCain need to address is what will accomplish a change and whether the costs will be worth it. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that wailing about Bush talking about appeasers is not the sign of a leader who has truly considered what he will need to do with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas if he were to become president.Labels: Foreign Policy, Obama
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The funniest political story this week has been the umbrage that Democrats have taken about Bush giving a speech to the Knesset in which he spoke out against appeasement of terrorist groups. Ah, Bush talks about appeasers, the Democrats scream, he must be discussing Barack Obama!
The party whose Speaker of the House traveled to Syria and proclaimed that the road to peace went through Damascus and whose former president recently met with the leader of Hamas and whose prospective presidential nominee proclaimed proudly that he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela heard the mention of appeasement and realized that the shoe fit and they were being forced to wear it. As the Wall Street Journal writes today,
Mark Steyn notes that Obama has a tendency to turn what other people say into comments about him whether he is mentioned or not.
The problem remains that there are no easy answers for how to deal with Iran. Talking to them won't work. Heck, the Europeans have been talking to them for years and the Iranians have proceeded apace with sponsoring attacks in Iraq and supporting Hezbollah and Syria in Lebanon. We've been negotiating for years with North Korea and using a multilateral approach and the North Koreans were still helping Syria to build a nuclear facility. There are no good options. As usual, the new president will be faced with choosing the least bad option and seeing what that would accomplish. They seem to think that the whole purpose of foreign policy is to talk with our enemies. Bush rightly pointed out that talking to these guys will accomplish nothing. The question Obama and McCain need to address is what will accomplish a change and whether the costs will be worth it. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that wailing about Bush talking about appeasers is not the sign of a leader who has truly considered what he will need to do with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas if he were to become president.
0 comments
The funniest political story this week has been the umbrage that Democrats have taken about Bush giving a speech to the Knesset in which he spoke out against appeasement of terrorist groups. Ah, Bush talks about appeasers, the Democrats scream, he must be discussing Barack Obama!
The party whose Speaker of the House traveled to Syria and proclaimed that the road to peace went through Damascus and whose former president recently met with the leader of Hamas and whose prospective presidential nominee proclaimed proudly that he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela heard the mention of appeasement and realized that the shoe fit and they were being forced to wear it. As the Wall Street Journal writes today,
Mr. Obama asserted again yesterday that he will not meet with terrorists. He is, however, willing to meet with Iran or Syria. Virtually no serious person disputes that Iran has shipped weaponry to terrorists in Iraq and that Syria has provided safe haven to these terrorists and let them cross from Syria into Iraq. In turn, these jihadists have killed U.S. soldiers. At a minimum, one might expect that ceasing this lethal activity would be a "precondition" before committing the office of the presidency to meet with either.Sure, Obama won't meet with terrorists, but he'll meet with the sponsors and bankrollers of terrorists.
Mark Steyn notes that Obama has a tendency to turn what other people say into comments about him whether he is mentioned or not.
"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."How to deal with these terror sponsors and their terror franchises is the essential question in our foreign policy for today and the coming era.
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies.
This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:Obama would have had a much stronger argument if he'd attacked Bush for the lack of accomplishments in dealing with Iran and the fact that Iran is going to be the next president's problem. Just this month, we've seen Syria reassert itself in Lebanon. For all his fine rhetoric, what has been the result? The WSJ writes,
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.
These columns have regularly criticized the current President and Secretary of State for failing to execute any discernible policy to stop the participation of these two state sponsors of terror in causing U.S. casualties in Iraq. This is the real mismatch between Mr. Bush's rhetoric and record, and where Senator Obama, if he chose, could hit hard. We doubt he will.Peter Wehner is exactly right when he ridicules Obama for providing a distraction from the debate about foreign policy.
The Bush Administration has finessed the Iran nuclear problem by handing it to the E3/EU "process" – taken nowhere by the world's top diplomatic talkers from France, Germany and the U.K. For two years, Condoleezza Rice's State Department has played footsie with whomever speaks for Iran, to no effect. For either Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi to suggest that they know better how to talk Iran's mullahs into an acceptable deal is, to put it gently, grandstanding.
Leaving no argument unturned, Democrats have reached back to Richard Nixon's trip to China and Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the Soviet Union as evidence that Republican Presidents "talk to the enemy." Put it this way: The day Iran brings forth a Chou Enlai and Syria a Mikhail Gorbachev, sure, give them a call.
If Obama believes the president’s appeasement formulation was wrong, fine; let him make a substantive argument for why that’s the case. And if he wants to present a careful argument for why as president he would meet without preconditions with the leader of not only Iran but also with the leaders of Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, all in his first year, that’s fine, too. In fact, it would be a welcome addition to the presidential debate. But for Obama to lash out in the manner he has is silly and unbecoming.Instead of whining about being tagged as appeasers, when it's not even clear that Bush was talking about Obama, the Democrats could have hit Bush about that gap between his rhetoric and what we're actually seeing in the Middle East.
What is driving this response? Probably the belief by Obama that he’s vulnerable to being portrayed as weak on national security matters and he wants to prove that he can’t be “swift-boated.” But Obama’s response will achieve neither aim and, in fact, it makes Obama look thin-skinned, a bit rattled, and prickly. Indeed, Obama’s response seems so 1990s. His words and the words of the campaign could have come straight from the lips of Paul Begala or other former Clinton attack dogs.
Obama and the Democrat’s DefCon 1 response to the president’s speech to the Knesset is a perfect illustration of the kind of tiresome “old politics” we really don’t need. The early media reports I heard of Bush’s speech didn’t even mention the appeasement line; it was only after Obama’s campaign and other Democrats exploded in (manufactured) fury that it became a political issue at all. Or, perhaps more accurately, a “distraction.” Which is exactly what I thought Obama was trying to move us away from.
The problem remains that there are no easy answers for how to deal with Iran. Talking to them won't work. Heck, the Europeans have been talking to them for years and the Iranians have proceeded apace with sponsoring attacks in Iraq and supporting Hezbollah and Syria in Lebanon. We've been negotiating for years with North Korea and using a multilateral approach and the North Koreans were still helping Syria to build a nuclear facility. There are no good options. As usual, the new president will be faced with choosing the least bad option and seeing what that would accomplish. They seem to think that the whole purpose of foreign policy is to talk with our enemies. Bush rightly pointed out that talking to these guys will accomplish nothing. The question Obama and McCain need to address is what will accomplish a change and whether the costs will be worth it. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that wailing about Bush talking about appeasers is not the sign of a leader who has truly considered what he will need to do with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas if he were to become president.
Labels: Foreign Policy, Obama
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