CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION
– FOREIGN POLICY
May 15, 2008 – 8:33 p.m.
Democrats Quickly Strike Back After Bush ‘Appeasement’ Comments
By Adam Graham-Silverman and Edward Epstein, CQ Staff
The Bush administration quickly learned a political lesson Thursday: If you attack a Democratic presidential candidate, you can expect a swift and harsh response from the Democratic Congress.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, among others, leapt to denounce President Bush for comments he made that they called a swipe at the party’s presidential front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
In Bush’s Thursday speech to Israel’s parliament, he said that negotiations with Iran would be “foolish delusion” and likened such possible talks to the appeasement of Nazis at the outset of World War II.
“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,’ ” Bush said. “We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Obama has said he would be willing to talk with Tehran.
Bush continued: “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.”
The president spoke as part of the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary celebration.
Pelosi responded only three hours after Bush spoke.
“I think what the president did in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of president,” she said. “I would hope that any serious person would disassociate themselves from those remarks.”
Biden Blows Up
Across the Capitol, Biden reacted even more vehemently. “This is bullshit, this is malarkey, this is outrageous!” Biden said.
“Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden fumed.
Biden noted that both Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have called for engagement with Iran under certain conditions.
Democrats Quickly Strike Back After Bush ‘Appeasement’ Comments
Biden later criticized Bush for taking politics abroad, particularly in a foreign ally’s parliament.
“For him to call those who rightly see the need for change ‘appeasers’ is truly delusional, and for him to do it abroad is truly disgraceful,” he said. “We’re not going to tolerate this long-distance swift-boating going on here.”
The White House denied that Bush’s remarks were aimed at Obama, but Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Obama’s staunchest Senate surrogate, called that notion “baloney.”
In his speech, Bush also criticized politicians who “explain away” Iran’s statements that Israel should be eradicated.
“As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously,” he said. “Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred.”
Pelosi is leading a high-ranking and bipartisan House delegation to Israel this weekend to help celebrate the state’s 60th anniversary.
Obama’s Response
Obama responded to Bush’s remarks in a statement, saying it was “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 politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally, Israel,” Obama said.
Even Obama’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has threatened to obliterate Iran if it used nuclear weapons on Israel, came to Obama’s defense.
“President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi-appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy,” she told reporters on the campaign trail Thursday.
Kathleen Hunter contributed to this story.
Comments
Senator Biden is correct. The National Embarrassment should be sitting in OUR legislature making ridiculous statements.
Evidently the democratic party leaders here have forgotten the lessons PM Chamberlain left us after trying to reason with Hitler in 1939. Hitler had an announced jewish policy that after the failure of the English, French, and others to reason with him, 'appeasement' resulted in the Holacost...an event no one in the Knessett, I can assure you, have forgetten. I think the President's remarks were inclusive of various leaders in the international community who have urged talks with terrorists and radicals. To make the point that 'appeasement' does not work on the international stage could not have been more effective than in a speech to the Knessett that touched upon the lessons of the '30s and '40s. I got your message, Mr. President, even if some of our fellow citizens tried, with the help of the media, to make it a callous domestic political statement. Some day...God forbid...they may have to realistically face the problems of dealing with these terrorists and radicals, and finding ways of reassuring our Israeli allies that we also have not forgotten the Holacost.
Point to the Democratic Party; the truth sometimes stings.
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