Outraged Democrats are on the attack over Bush's speech to the Knesset in which he said this:


The Obama campaign issued a statement in which he said, "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 politicisation of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally, Israel."

I guess that isn't a problem since Obama "reframed" his position.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded:


I think Bush and Perino were both right. And you?

progunr

OK Excon,

Negotiation sounds good, but I'm still looking for an answer to the questions:

What do you offer the bully who just wants to beat you up everyday, your milk money?

OK, then, thats not enough, now he demands your lunch money AND your milk money!!

Soon, that is not enough either. By now, he is well aware of just how afraid of him you are, so where does it end?

It ends when you stop trying to buy or bribe him to leave you alone, and you stomp the living crap out of him instead. Much like Tomder55's post about how Reagan dealt with the former Soviet Union.

Just exactly what do you "negotiate" with these dictators anyway? What would YOU offer to try to get them to leave us alone?

magprob

You're right by golly. So we better force democracy down their throats as quickly as possible and for the ones that won't swallow it...kill em! If they don't believe like we believe they deserve death! By Golly!

BABRAM

SFGate: Blogs: The Ross Report


"Barack Obama is not the only one who should be taking offense at President Bush's insistence that anyone having truck with terrorists is no better than Neville Chamberlain and, furthermore, ignores the lessons of the Holocaust.

According to an opinion poll last February, 64% of Israelis -- many of them Holocaust survivors or their relatives and descendants -- wanted their government to talk directly to Hamas.

Many Israeli analysts and senior military officers have long felt the same way. For example:

Hamas is not going to disappear," says Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli military chief of strategic planning. "They're not Al Qaeda; they're a national political movement." Brom, who favors indirect negotiations with Hamas, says he believes a dialogue could help moderate the Islamists. (Newsweek, March 7, 2008)


Appeasers all, in President Bush's world view (and John McCain's, apparently -- although it differs with what McCain said about Hamas a couple of years ago)

As for Iran, also the focus of Bush's and McCain's appeasement wrath, here is Bush's own Defense Secretary:

In a speech given to a group of former American diplomats, Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, stated that his country needs to seek dialogue with Iran. He advocated engaging Tehran diplomatically, rather than simply attempting to intimidate it. (The National, Abu Dhabi, May 16, 2008)"




Obama Calls Out McCain, Bush

Obama Calls Out McCain, Bush - Political Machine

By Tommy Christopher
May 16th 2008 5:30PM


"Senator Barack Obama responded today to George W. Bush and John S. McCain's double-team attacks from Thursday, which likened Obama to a Nazi appeaser. Obama points out that Bush is using speeches to foreign governments to campaign for John McCain, and challenges Bush and McCain to a debate on protecting America:

'If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place.'


The White House, meanwhile, did its level best to back away from the attack, playing the wide-eyed schoolgirl. From the NY Times:

During the White House press gaggle today in Saudi Arabia, Dana Perino and Ed Gillespie expressed shock (!) over the widespread Democratic outrage toward President Bush's remarks to the Knesset in Jerusalem yesterday.
Missing from the White House's shocked reaction was a repudiation of McCain, who did specifically mention Obama.

It's a little gutless, if you ask me, but then again, so is having a diplomatic strategy that involves negotiating only after your adversary has capitulated to the demands you wish to negotiate for:

Tucker Bounds, one of the spokesman, said:

'There should be no confusion, John McCain has always believed that serious engagement would require mandatory conditions and Hamas must change itself fundamentally – renounce violence, abandon its goal of eradicating Israel and accept a two state solution. John McCain's position is clear and has always been clear, the president of the United States should not unconditionally meet with leaders of Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah.'

So, once all that is done, they can sit down and negotiate what? A pre-nup?

Obama's response was right on the money. If the press isn't going to challenge the ridiculous notion that the Bush/McCain foreign policy has made America safer, perhaps it is best if Obama did it, face-to-face. Looks like the Bush administration, at least, doesn't have the stones for that fight. We'll see about McCain."

excon

Hello again, prog:

We're just not on the same page with what we think diplomacy is, who you do it with and why...

Diplomacy isn't giving stuff away. It's isn't coddling the enemy. It isn't done with fanatics. I don't know where you get your ideas. Rush Limprod maybe????

excon

PS> What about offering a way for him to make his own milk money?

Galveston1

Er, I know this is a dumb question, but since terrorism has no country, just where would be a good place to have an embassy?

inthebox

I'm wondering if any of the Soviets were stupid enough to be homicidal bombers?

Maybe that is why MAD worked.

These radical jihadists want D and they don't care about the MA.

inthebox

Think about this

If Bush and the Neocons truly wanted to "steal someone's oil and land" and they do not care what the rest of the world thinks as the msm always says; don't you think that after shock and awe the US military is fully capable of an Operation Anaconda in Iraq. Seal the borders so insurgents and supplies from Syria and Iran could not keep up an insurgency, shut out all media, have a slash and burn policy, anex the oil fields for our use, and establish a military dictatorship?

What has gone on?
Our military helps build the infrastructure, the Iraquis have their own elections and government, the US does not have their oil fields and we are paying $4 a gallon for gas.

speechlesstx

I thought it was the Bush/Rove/Cheney foreign policy. Now the left has shifted the responsibility to McCain?

speechlesstx

ex, if you're talking Iran, um... isn't that what started those whole mess? What was it, 444 days? Led in part no less by the guy we're supposed to negotiate with?

You guys want us all to think there have been no negotiations and there have - direct or not. The EU3 negotiations, how did that go? How about this from May 2006? "After 27 years in which the United States has refused substantive talks with Iran, President Bush reversed course." What happened there? Oh yeah, the Six - the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - proposed negotiations and Iran rejected them, right?

In April of this year, "The U.N. nuclear watchdog's director urged Iran on Thursday to resume negotiations over its disputed nuclear program with the U.N. Security Council's permanent members and Germany."


Takes two sides to talk, ex. Then we can negotiate, work things out and build "relations" that are necessary for "diplomacy." But that Dipstick in Iran that helped seize our embassy and hold hostages for 444 days that wants to wipe Israel off the map so he can bring his 12th Imam out of the well isn't worthy of an audience with the free world, let alone an inkling of trust.

magprob

So let's get the WHOLE story straight. Now that we have a puppet government in Iraq, ( American Client State to be exact) It will soon be time to move on to the next conquest...Iran. This is how it is really done...in the real world.

In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d’etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran. The government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The aftershocks of the coup are still being felt.

In 1951 Prime Minister Mossadegh roused Britain’s ire when he nationalized the oil industry. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves which had been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The company later became known as British Petroleum (BP).

After considering military action, Britain opted for a coup d’état. President Harry Truman rejected the idea, but when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, he ordered the CIA to embark on one of its first covert operations against a foreign government.

The coup was led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. The CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. Kermit Roosevelt had help from Norman Schwarzkopf’s father: Norman Schwarzkopf.

The CIA and the British helped to undermine Mossadegh’s government through bribery, libel, and orchestrated riots. Agents posing as communists threatened religious leaders, while the US ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American nationals.

Some 300 people died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.

Mossadegh was overthrown, sentenced to three years in prison followed by house arrest for life.

The crushing of Iran’s first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.

After the 1979 revolution President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah into the U.S. Fearing the Shah would be sent back to take over Iran as he had been in 1953, Iranian militants took over the U.S. embassy–where the 1953 coup was staged–and held hundreds hostage.

The 50th anniversary of the coup was front-page news in Iranian newspapers. The Christian Science Monitor reports one paper in Iran publishing excerpts from CIA documents on the coup, which were released only three years ago.

The U.S. involvement in the fall of Mossadegh was not publicly acknowledged until three years ago. In a New York Times article in March 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that “the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”