President Bush's speech to the Israeli parliament struck a nerve with Barak Obama even though he wasn't mentioned in his remarks. The president spoke of the shortsighted policy of appeasement and why it doesn't work. Obama never advocated appeasement and hasn't objected to the substance of Bush's point. Obama took the presidents words as a criticism of his idea that face to face meetings with our enemies, unconditionaly, is equal to appeasement. There has been criticism of this idea by his primary and Republican opponent, none of which mention the word appeasement. By taking offense to Bush's speech Obama becomes the first person to associate his proposal with the idea appeasement only to deny that it is.
So a firestorm has erupted kicking off the general election and with that the season of hypocrisy hunting. Democrats dug up a statement John McCain made in that the US is going to have to deal with Hamas whom at the time had been elected as the government of the Palestinian Authority. McCain's siding with Bush doesn't jibe with dealing with Hamas as he suggested, so they say. On the surface it looks like McCain has been bagged. That Hamas at the time became head of the Palestinian authority and still is, communications are inevitable. That is before they decided to launch missiles into Israeli civilian populated areas, a small detail the Democrats presumably would have us ignore.
To cut through the demagoguery and talking points the question that needs further analysis is that in talking to America's enemies; is it appeasement? It depends. The US communicates with its adversaries all the time. Not at the presidential level but at lower diplomatic levels even during war. What the Democrats are doing is trying to obfuscate the difference between the importance of the presidency and the white house with low level diplomacy. They are not the same thing, there is a vast difference. Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map, so they've said; support and arm terrorist organizations such has Hamas and Hezbollah while arming Al Qaeda in Iraq to kill US servicemen. Iran leadership denies there was a holocaust. With all this should they be given a seat at the table in the oval office? Venezuelan leader Cesar Chavez insulted the president at the UN. Aside from his lunatic socialist despotic rule and tough talk and hatred for the US, should such a man be invited to the White House as well? For the sake of argument lets say it isn't appeasement the problem with this policy is a matter of pride and prestige. Such meetings at this level gives lunatics a facade of reason, equates stupidity with misunderstanding. Is Obama going to change their mind about anything? Will he shake their hand in front of the camera? This is the problem. They will be elevated, in fact rewarded by their bad behavior but the serious danger is that we are being lowered by understanding to agree with cordial disagreement when their premise is our demise.
Obama's high minded idea was given during a primary debate. Let's hope he was just pandering to his far left wing base that see's nothing unique or exceptional about America other then being the focus of what is wrong with the world and in some corners find common ground with some of the worst dictators when it comes to their distorted view of America. This is the only constituency that see's the rationale to such mistaken feel good ideas. It may or may not be appeasement however it is not wise and disasterous just the same.
