"Appeasement" bullshit

by Dennis Rahkonen | May 18, 2008

A few things need to be stated, forthrightly and upfront, about the slanderous Bush/McCain accusation that Barack Obama is like those who appeased Hitler because he sees the diplomatic wisdom in talking things out instead of immediately blowing them up, if that option reasonably presents itself.

The thoroughly sooty Republican pot is in no position to call anyone's kettle black.

Wasn't Richard Nixon dealing with what was deemed an enemy nation when he went to Beijing to parlay with Chairman Mao in 1972?

How about the Reagan administration cozying up to radicals in Tehran when the secret, illegal Iran-Contra deal was being orchestrated?

Additionally, we've all seen photos of Donald Rumsfeld smilingly shaking Saddam Hussein's hand when the political expediency of a not-too-distant past made it convenient to overlook the despotism of a man who would later -- under different expediency -- be demonized to the hilt.

And didn't George Bush encourage negotiation with the Libyan regime, plus North Korea?

Second, if it's correct that nobody should talk to anyone who practices terrorism, then all of humanity ought to forever remain mute toward the United States.

Honesty forces us to admit that all of the individual and state terrorism of the past few decades taken together couldn't remotely begin to match what America has done through its bloody interventions and dirty wars during the same period.

If you feel that invading a country without provocation and for fabricated reasons, using withering Shock and Awe, isn't terrorism, then maybe you should trade places with the ghosts of innocent men, women, and children who shrieked in horrified fear, just before they painfully perished, when Bush attacked.

Over a million Iraqis no longer breathe the bracing air, thanks to rightwing US militarism.

Far fewer Americans and Israelis have died at the hands of essentially small-time terrorists than the number of civilians both Washington and Tel Aviv have killed, wounded, dispossessed, or imprisoned, through their repressively wielded, tremendous armed might over extended time.

Let's not forget, too, that we saturated Vietnam with Agent Orange, set it ablaze with napalm and white phosphorous, air-attacked its dike system, and dropped a greater general tonnage of explosive ordnance than was employed in all of WWII.

How many people died as a result? Estimates range upward from two million. It's tough to tell, for sure, when your "free-fire zone" mass murder burns and rips apart countless human beings, leaving only smoldering shards behind.

Let it also be noted that, as Hitler was tendentiously building his power and could have still been stopped, forces left of center on the international political spectrum urgently called for a "united front" to nip incipient fascism in the bud.

Guess who resisted? Conservatives who were enamored with the Nazi idea, and who in many cases were trading with Hitler, against humanity's collective interest. Prescott Bush, "our" president's grandfather, was one of the most shamefully representative members of that nefarious bunch.

Progressives and partisans of the true left, from many countries, took matters into their own hands, volunteering for the International Brigades that bravely fought Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler in Spain in 1936. I was named after a dear friend of my father -- part of a vastly outgunned rag-tag army -- who died fighting what he knew was the unprecedented evil that would surely arise if defense of a free Spain failed, as it ultimately did.

Reactionaries are notorious for their propaganda crap.

But sometimes their ordure is so overwhelmingly foul that no one can resist gagging.

It's incredible that Republicans believe those whom they've repulsed to the point of nearly vomiting will vote for them in November!