Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The "Appeasement" Attack: Nothing New

Good, short piece in the Sunday Times Week in Review situating the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld efforts to tie, if subtly, opponents of the administration's Iraq policy to 1930's appeasement policy.

The upshot: Although perhaps most prudent to never take appeasement option off the table in dealing with a hostile state, post WWII American history shows unequivically that American presidents of both parties (starting with FDR's own attacks on Republican isolationists as appeasers) have employed to bully pulpit to paint their political opponents as treading in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain.

Most entertaining, if somewhat off-color: LBJ's quote re: opponents of his Vietnam policy, "If you let a bully come into your front yard one day, the next day he’ll be up on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”

Most prescious: The fact Bush's own efforts to portray Democrats as appeasers have complicated by the fact the Bill Kristols have simultaneously opened a similar line of attack against him re: the administration's diplomatic overtures to Iran. It's hard to credibly make the appeaser attack stick when many of your former friends are trying to do the same to you. The desire to extricate themselves from this stickly political dilemma may explain as much as anything else the turn-up in the rhetoric from the President re: Iran this past week.

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