By now we’ve all read about President George W. Bush’s speech before the Israeli Knesset, in which he said:
This struggle is waged with the technology of the 21st century, but at its core it is an ancient battle between good and evil. The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers. In truth, the men who carry out these savage acts serve no higher goal than their own desire for power. They accept no God before themselves. And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis.
And that is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the "elimination" of Israel.
And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant "Death to Israel, Death to America!" That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that "the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties." And that is why the President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.
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. (Applause.)
[Emphasis added.]
We all know that Barack Obama and his allies on the left have taken the President’s words rather personally, as if the President were calling Senator Obama an appeaser, even though the President did not mention Senator Obama. What is so funny is that there are plenty of elements within Israeli politics that are appeasement oriented.
Bruce Ramsey, the editor of the Seattle Times makes excuses for Obama this way (via Little Green Footballs, emphasis theirs):
Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.
What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.
See also more comments from Ace of Spades.
Remember the joke that was told about the French a couple of years ago? It went like this – FRENCH TERROR ALERT! The French have raised their alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two levels higher than these are “Surrender” and “Collaborate.” Well, it seems that today’s leftists have gone pretty much from “Surrender” to Collaborate.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) characterized our efforts in Iraq as “lost” pretty recently, and many foreign policy advisors in Sen. Obama’s Presidential campaign team are open sympathizers with the terrorist group Hamas. And let’s not get into the actions of the unhinged left, as enumerated by Concrete Bob.
Can’t any of them recognize our successes, or at least express a desire for us to win? I guess not, which may explain why the good young Senator, and his apologists, doth protest too much.
