Dialog, appeasement or support

This week President Bush made a significant blunder while giving a speech in Israel. He compared Senator Barack Obama’s willingness to talk with Iran, Syria and Palestinians with the “appeasement” Prime Minister Chamberlain gave to the Nazis in 1938. The rightwing echo machine went into full speed, naming Obama as the one Bush was talking about and how history has proven that appeasement of evil regimes has had disastrous results.

What Chamberlain actually did in 1938 was to concede part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in a treaty. That wasn’t dialog – it was giving into demands, much as Reagan did when he made a deal with the Iranian government in the mid-’80s to trade arms for hostages.

Beyond appeasement, there’s actual support for the wrong regimes. Bush cited a US Senator who said when Hitler invaded Poland, “Lord if we could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” What Bush failed to say is that the Senator was a Republican and that Bush’s own grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped finance the Nazi movement and had several companies in which he had an interest in seized by the US Government under the Trading With the Enemy Act. Whether Prescott was a Nazi supporter or just liked the financial rewards of doing business with them matters little to those who were killed in the war.

Just as GHW Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld felt it was a good idea to give arms to Saddam and Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.

Jon Monday