A story in The Jerusalem Post (linked in the Dredge Report) quotes Army Radio as reporting that the Bush Administration plans a military strike against Iran before the end of Bush’s Presidency. This is hardly news. Anyone who has been even partially conscious during the past couple of years knows that Bush has every intention of attacking Iran while he has the chance. What IS news, however, is that the White House denies that it is planning an attack, (despite reports from the Pentagon of preparations to do just that). Spokespeople for the President insist, according to the Jerusalem Post, that the United States continues to rely on diplomacy to resolve the situation.
Wait. George W. Bush is relying on diplomacy with Iran. Now, isn’t that appeasement? When Barack Obama suggests diplomacy, the President goes before foreign legislative bodies and declares it appeasement. But, when George Bush does it, it’s diplomacy.
I am wondering, however, if it was appeasement when the Bush Administration negotiated with North Korea over it’s nuclear program, or when Oliver North illegally sold weapons to the very same Iranian regime he now advocates on Fox News that we attack? Was it appeasement when Bush’s father negotiated with Saddam Hussein? Was it appeasement when that noted Communist Ronald Reagan negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev, or when Gerald Ford negotiated the Helsinki accord with Leonid Brezhnev, or when Nixon went to China or Kennedy achieved the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev?
Blanket statements such as Mr. Bush’s are naive and simple-minded and when John McCain calls Barack Obama naive and appeasing, he’s either ignoring or has forgotten his own party’s long history of using diplomacy to achieve peace without war.
