Republicans Make Asses Of Themselves, Democrats Come Together

American politicians generally make a point of not attacking fellow Americans while overseas on diplomatic trips. In fact it is quite frowned upon, for obvious reasons, pretty unusual and taboo. Well leave it to Bush to not rest on tradition. While delivering an address yesterday before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists, simply because Obama, like many foreign policy experts, believes that diplomacy is a sign on strength, and we can only make progress if we will engage our enemies as well as our allies. CNN reported that Bush compared Obama to "other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis" for his willingness to actually talk to leaders we disagree with (something Bush has strongly opposed for almost 8 years, and look how great that worked out). Bush wasn’t the first person to attack Obama for this, that honor goes to Hillary Clinton, in what was basically the first negative attack of the Democratic primary (fittingly it came from her), when Obama first stated that he would be willing to meet with foreign leaders who don’t agree with us, and Hillary attacked him as naïve and inexperienced, even though his position made absolute sense. Obama didn’t back down, and many foreign policy experts agreed with Obama’s policy of strength through diplomacy. Hillary eventually quieted her attacks on that topic after it became obvious she was on the wrong side of that argument, but Bush apparently thought it was a good one (not the first or the last time Hillary and Republicans will share talking points), so he fired this off yesterday in front of the Israeli Parliament:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Okay, so I’m going to ignore the fact that Bush just quoted Republican Senator William Edgar Borah there, and move on to point out that diplomacy, talking to your enemies, is not appeasement, and that is not what emboldened Hitler during the events running up to the start of the Second World War. This is something Republicans, ever fond of talking out their asses, don’t seem to understand, as Chris Matthews showed amazingly well last night when he put a right-wing radio host in his place after he spouted a bunch of ignorant nonsense:



That was probably one of the greatest things I’ve seen since:



Anyway, then, not surprisingly, McCain jumps on board:

Asked if he thought Mr. Obama was an appeaser — the Democratic candidate has said he would be willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran — Mr. McCain sidestepped and said, "I think that Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map, who denies the Holocaust. That’s what I think Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people.'’

Now it cannot be denied that Ahmadinejad is an unsavory character, but the US government has offered no evidence that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, or responsible for killing Americans. In 2007 the Republicans (and hawkish Democrats like Hillary) took the unprecedented step of labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a branch of a foreign government’s standing army (focused on homeland security and defense), a terrorist organization, again, with no evidence to back that up. But that doesn’t make it true, you still need facts to back that claim up, especially such a serious claim. And I have to say that if the use of force by militaries of sovereign countries can now be interpreted as terrorism (as it should, when they actually do harm, war is terrorism), the United States, and to a lesser extent Israel, would be the largest terrorist organizations operating in the world, by the logic of McCain, Bush, the Republicans and hawkish Democrats like Hillary. That is why their throwing around the term terrorism like that was unprecedented, and very unwise—which actually makes Hillary’s (and the Republican’s) positions on foreign policy extremely reckless, irresponsible and ignorant—not Obama’s.

Oh yeah, and then you have McCain two years ago, sounding more like Jimmy Carter than George Bush, saying that we need to negotiate with Hamas, because they represent the Palestinians and we have to deal with the realities of the situation if we want to solve anything, thus proving that the Clintons don’t have a monopoly on hypocrisy and doublespeak after all:

Q: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

[video here]

And then we had former Democrat Joe Lieberman, the GOP’s favorite puppet and McCain’s top cheerleader adding to the pile on against Obama:

President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," and that holds that — if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers — they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.

Again, we see that the preferred method of conflict resolution from conservatives is bloodshed before diplomacy. Why try to resolve conflicts peacefully when you can fight til the last one standing, which is essentially what they are all advocating. If they didn’t fight til the last man (or woman or child) was standing, then that would mean that at some point the fighting would end is a cease fire, and they would come together and talk to make peace, which is exactly what they are saying cannot happen. Ceasefires are tools of the weak for McCain and the rest of the hawks, so it wouldn’t make any sense to ever cease fighting, because if you eventually have to stop and make peace through diplomacy, there would have been absolutely no reason to not try diplomacy first, you know, before thousands or millions of civilians were slaughtered, maimed and displaced.

So Obama fired back at Bush, specifically on the issue of engagement with actual terrorists:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

And then Obama’s Democratic posse, which has been coalescing around him since his wins in North Carolina and Indiana got his back, first Senator Biden, with color:

This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.

He is the guy who has weakened us. He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.

Well said. Next, Speaker Pelosi went after Bush’s choice of venue, and took a shot at McCain:

We have a protocol, sort of a custom, informally around here that we don't criticize the president when he is on foreign soil. One would think that that would apply to the president that he would not criticize Americans when he is on foreign soil.

I think what the president said in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel.

I would hope that any serious person would disassociate himself from the president's remarks who aspires to leadership in our country.

And then Senator Kerry added his criticism:

What an irony to have the current president in Israel blasting Democrats from the Knesset when his policies have actually seen al-Qaeda get strengthened, they've seen al-Qaeda be reconstructed, they've seen Hezbollah get stronger, they've seen Hamas get stronger, Israel more threatened, Iran is stronger and Iraq is in chaos.
This is a disgraceful statement by the president ... He ought to apologize to the American people for going to Israel and using the Knesset and the celebration of the 60th anniversary of a state and a people that we all support and that we're all proud of and using it for politics.

Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation's history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round. More than seven years into his Presidency and in the sixth year of the directionless Iraq war, President Bush has yet to learn that his brand of divisive partisan rhetoric is precisely what has made America and our allies less secure. And for the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics.

And Howard Dean rounds out the Democratic leadership by going after McCain:

On the same day John McCain is talking about putting partisanship aside, the President launched a cheap political attack while on a state visit honoring the 60th anniversary of Israel, one of America's greatest allies. Bush's outrageous comments are an embarrassment to our country, not based in fact and bring us no closer to our goal of ending terrorist attacks against Israel and bringing peace to the region. If John McCain is really serious about being a different kind of Republican, he'll denounce these remarks in the strongest terms possible.

But of course we know he didn’t denounce them, he parroted them, and then his parrot in turn played the echo chamber. And amazingly enough, Hillary came to the defense of Obama and Democrats for a change, even though she was the first one to raise similar right-wing attacks:

President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.

I applaud her for that, and for not adding "Obama isn’t a Nazi appeaser or terrorist, as far as I know" at the end.

In the end it was a good exchange, because it highlighted how very wrong the Republicans are on foreign policy, like everything else, and it was an occasion for the biggest show of Party unity from the Democrats in quite some time. If we keep our eye on the prize and everything in perspective, we can do some great things come November and beyond. All this gives me hope.

Note: Word on the street is that Obama will "respond forcefully" to Bush today in a speech.

Update: And here is Obama's response:



This is where it is a very good thing that our candidate didn't vote for the war, or vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. He couldn't go after Bush, McCain and the Republicans nearly as effectively if he was complicit in their worst mistakes.

Update #2: McCain responds with his characteristic distortions:

Earlier today, Sen. Obama made a few remarks I would like to respond to. I welcome a debate about protecting America. No issue is more important. Sen. Obama claimed all I had to offer was the ‘naive and irresponsible belief’ that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program. He should know better. I have some news for Sen. Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ and arms terrorists who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.

It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Sen. Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.

And Obama responds with a complete smackdown:

What's reckless is continuing the Bush-McCain foreign policy that has cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars in Iraq, strengthened Iran, enabled Hamas to take Gaza, took our eye off al Qaeda, failed to capture Osama bin Laden, failed to finish the job in Afghanistan, and left us less safe and less respected in the world. No amount of utterly predictable fear-mongering and tough talk can change the fact that John McCain is running to continue the most disastrous foreign policy in recent American history.

BAM!! I suggest McCain take the rest of the weekend off to recover from that verbal lashing. He'll need to be nice and rested for his next dose.