Democrats react guiltily to President Bush's warnings against appeasement

By JEFF EMANUEL
May 19, 2008

President Bush's address to the Israeli Knesset, marking the occasion of that country's 60th anniversary, sparked political and media controversy that has lasted into this week -- but not because of him. Rather, a specific passage in Mr. Bush’s speech – in which he admonished those who would appease terrorists in hopes that concessions would change their inherently evil behavior – sparked a backlash at home among those who felt the remark hit a bit too close to home for their own personal comfort.

The portion of the nearly 2,500-word speech that so rankled some on the American Left was this 84-word paragraph (emphasis added):

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the 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 I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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.

Truer words that have been more borne out by history – both recent and ancient – have rarely been spoken. While attacks and disasters have always triggered introspection, the fact that there are people who cannot be reasoned with – who will carry out such acts regardless of the concessions made to them – is a simple reality that must be accepted and dealt with if such events are to be prevented. America and Israel are dealing with such people now, in the form of the respective memberships of Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and other terrorist and militant networks and organizations (just to name a few).

Rather than take these words at face value, and speak out in affirmation, a number of individuals on the American Left – despite an absence of names in the statement -- appear to have taken Mr. Bush’s warning against appeasement as a personal attack against their views and, as usual during this time of war, a challenge to their patriotism – a subject that seems to perpetually inflame certain individuals’ inferiority complexes.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) exploded at the Bush statement, cursing and calling the warning against appeasement “outrageous” and “ridiculous.” Former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) called himself “shocked” and “very, very saddened” by what he referred to as the President’s “unprecedented political attack.”

Unprecedented? Perhaps both Mr. Biden and Mr. Daschle have forgotten the actions of the man they supported to be President instead of Bush: Al Gore, who stood on Saudi Arabian soil in 2006 and named names, condemning both Bush and the entire U.S. government for “terrible abuses” against Arabs, whom he charged – to his Arab audience – had been “indiscriminately rounded up” and kept in “unforgivable” conditions in response to 9/11.

Or perhaps the charge of appeasement hits close enough to home for Mr. Daschle that he sees Bush’s didactic statement as far more personal an attack than Gore’s accusations of Bush ever were.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the President’s encouragement that all learn from history “beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at the celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary.” This is, of course, the same Speaker Pelosi who has sat idly by while Presidents Clinton and Carter have condemned the current officeholder, both on foreign soil and in the media. Further, Ms. Pelosi apparently does not consider it “beneath the dignity of” her office to attack the President of the United States, by name, both in the media and from the floor of the House of Representatives, all while condemning the Iraqi front in the Global War on Terror as a distraction from the “real war on terror.”

Media personalities sprang out of the woodwork to offer instant condemnation of the President’s statement, as well. One particularly indignant writer, Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, shrieked from the pages of the paper’s blog that Bush had “committed political treason” by “comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany,” and called on the Democratic Congress to “play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma,” by impeaching and convicting Bush “before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name.”

Mr. Bunch’s view fit in with what seemed to be the consensus opinion of the American Left heading into the weekend: that President Bush’s statement about the dangers of appeasing and negotiating with enemies, in which he named no names (only even alluding directly to one man, a Republican Senator), was a verbal broadside directed at none other than Senator Barack Obama, the Democrat candidate for President.

Whether this was a realistic view or not, Mr. Obama stirred the pot almost immediately by releasing a statement in which he indignantly condemned the President for maybe, sort of, possibly alluding to him, saying, “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,"and reiterating his indignation both in the media and at campaign stops throughout the weekend.

Mr. Obama may have very good reason to feel hot under the collar about warnings of the dangers of appeasement and of meeting with rogue leaders and terrorists in unilateral good faith. After all, he has already promised to personally meet – “without precondition” -- with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba. Further, he has been endorsed by Hamas, a terrorist organization that not only officially seeks the destruction of Israel, but oversees the firing of rockets into civilian areas of the Jewish state on a daily basis. While Mr. Obama did not officially accept that endorsement – and accuses John McCain of "dishonest attacks" whenever the subject is brought up – Obama campaign spokesman David Axelrod did respond to the Hamas statement of support by acknowledging that the comparison of Obama to the late John F. Kennedy by the terrorist spokesman (referred to by Axelrod as “the gentleman from Hamas”) was “flattering.”

However, few if any would have directly linked Bush’s statement to Mr. Obama had he not thrust himself into the spotlight and so loudly declared himself the appeaser that Mr. Bush was attacking in Israel last week.

Perhaps it is a result of Obama’s inherent belief in his own self-worth that he simply cannot let a speech be made by a political leader without thinking that it is, in some way, about him. Regardless, his insistence on ensuring the spotlight – positive or negative – is focused on him has caused far more to consider the nature of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy views in the light of historical experience.

Obama’s meltdown in response to a speech that, quite simply, wasn’t about him is instructive, and is reminiscent of a story that Bill Cosby used to tell back in his days as a humorist. One day in shop class, Cosby recounted, somebody put a bullet in the class furnace. Of course, it exploded, and caused quite a ruckus in the class. The teacher, looking for the culprit, asked the students who had put that bullet in the shop class furnace.

Of course, nobody responded. So, the teacher tried a second tack: “Somebody,” she said, “would have to be pretty low down to put a bullet in the shop class furnace!”

Again, the students looked around at each other innocently, none taking responsibility for the distraction.

So the teacher tried a third time, this time saying, “Somebody’s mother would have to be pretty low down for their son to put a bullet in the shop class furnace!”

At this, one boy leapt to his feet, yelling to the teacher, “I didn’t do it, and don’t talk about my mother!”

Whether President Bush’s well-founded remarks before the Knesset on Thursday were aimed at Barack Obama or not, Mr. Obama’s extremely ill-conceived decision to leap to his feet and cry “I’m not an appeaser, and don’t talk about my mother!” managed to convince any who did not think of him when speaking of appeasement and failed foreign policy that they should, in fact, begin to do so.

The same goes for the rest of the Democrats who took such great umbrage at the President’s statement of historical truism. Clearly, their knee-jerk reaction to being told one of the great lessons of history has revealed a deep insecurity about their own views and the results of the real-world application of their own foreign policy prescriptions.

In an ideal world, the fact that such a disproportionately explosive reaction was provoked by a mere speech at the anniversary celebration of one of our closest allies will shock some of these individuals into a state of introspection, causing them to look inward to find what it is in them that made them respond in such a way to a simple statement of historical fact.

The world, of course, is not perfect – and it is doubtful that anything will come from this but further political attacks, and attempts to condemn any discussion of issues that might make some Democrats feel uncomfortable. Fortunately, the more that these individuals shout, “I didn’t do it, and don’t talk about my mother!,” the more the spotlight of needless protestation shines on them – and the more guilty they look in the eyes of the American people.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated combat journalist, and a Director Emeritus of conservative weblog RedState.com. His writings can be seen at www.JeffEmanuel.net.