The President “goes negative” (??)—and the Times goes fully insane…
…and completely in the tank for the glass–jawed Obama.
According to the outraged Times, Bush’s “shameful” and “damaging” “slash-and-burn politics” were demonstrated by his mentioning in front of the Knesset that appeasement of terrorists is a bad thing, although some people advocate it. Oh, the horror!
And what’s more to the point, this statement of Bush’s constitutes a “barely veiled attack” (there’s that “a” word again!) against wunderkind Obama and therefore is the equivalent of a stab in the back. Or the front. Or somewhere.
This is bordering on the surreal. It is beyond parody, really, although we keep trying. I like to think—and in fact I do think—that even if I were an Obama-supporter I would not be considering Bush’s remarks an attack most foul, but merely a relevant statement on a historic occasion, an appropriate and general mention of the dangers of appeasement as part of a lengthy speech in front of a legislative body.
I keep trying to get away from this latest subject (not to mention going cold turkey on the NY Times), but I’m finding it difficult. The spectacle of the Democrats falling all over themselves protesting something they should have ignored, and of the MSM loudly joining in chorus and crying “foul” when the videotape shows no foul was committed, is symptomatic of a deeper pathology than I previously thought existed even in those particular groups.
One of the things I believe is occurring is that it’s become clear Obama will be the Democratic nominee. It’s also become clear he’s got some major vulnerabilities. So it becomes the task of the MSM to ramp up the propaganda to new heights, and logic or believability can go out the window. Never can be heard a discouraging word about Obama; it’s just too dangerous. In their zeal to douse the fires of any and every criticism, they’re answering false alarms.
They are pulling public opinion around on a very delicate leash. Pull a little too hard and it will snap. Of course, if some of the parody media and comics get into the game, things could really get interesting.
But yes, it is disgusting.
Neo,
Propaganda is the word, I guess. Though mustn’t that mean a careful, calculated intent to persuade, to sway the ostensible pagans? Rather than a knee-jerk emotional response in the heat of an argument with them?
But I find the disconnect between my personal perception of reality in this instance more like my reaction to the public’s reaction to the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdict.
This reaction against (and projection onto) Pres. Bush’s speech by Sen. Obama and his supporters strikes me as far more emotional than reasoned to from the facts at hand. Indeed, they can barely bring themselves to mention the facts, all the while shouting the emotive stuff you cite, and more to boot.
It was disturbing, to say the least, to see a double murderer go unjustly free. How much more disturbing to contemplate being governed by a crowd like this for the next four years?
I find a counterargument by John Podhoretz at Contentions, that the Obama crowd isn’t emotional but utterly calculating posted under the title “Method to the Madness”. He ends his article “But it’s still meshugah.”
I’m with you on this one. I think it’s playing victim politics to the highest degree. I hope it backfires on them.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: “Methinks the Dems doth protest too much”
Human nature never seems to change.
MikeM,
Human nature, whatever it is, probably does change, but much more slowly than glaciers form and move. On the other hand, the general behavior of human beings can change comparatively quickly (on a relatively shorter timescale).
Take the case of Thersites at the beginning of the Iliad. Described as a weak, grotesque hunchbacky sort of fellow who pipes up in meeting of the Greek warriors and gets a beating for his trouble. Now one present remarks in the least over this treatment not would they be expected to. Now think how we wise, far more knowing, fair minded moderns treat the Code Pink girls hovering ever in the background of our oh-so serious House and Senate hearings. See the difference I do?
I saw this too, Neo, and what scared me the most is that Bush’s remarks were, as far as it goes, pretty respectful and not really much of an attack. This was at worst an oblique criticism, and hardly a surprising one. It was far less harsh than Obama deserved. That the MSM would freak like this not only blatantly states their blind support. It also implies that they really are believers in the Cult of Barrack. The ferver – no one can insult the prophet reminds me of other fanatics who scream furor and hatred and demand that no one ever criticize their icon never be criticized. Stalinists, Al Qaeda…
njc:
“They are pulling public opinion around on a very delicate leash. Pull a little too hard and it will snap.”
I think all these guys (the democrats) have done was reinforce, in peoples minds by their very compmlaints, that the unstated “attack” upon them is a valid one.
“I like to think–and in fact I do think–that even if I were an Obama-supporter I would not be considering Bush’s remarks an attack most foul, but merely a relevant statement on a historic occasion, an appropriate and general mention of the dangers of appeasement as part of a lengthy speech in front of a legislative body.”
The problem is you aren’t an Obama supporter, and therefore aren’t aware of just how strongly he supports appeasement. It’s just like how nobody knew Obama viewed ordinary working-class people with the deepest contempt until his supporters started bragging about it, thinking they were doing his campaign a favor.
The media does its damndest to keep us from knowing about the real Obama, because we would probably vote against him if we did. Fortunately, they can’t control Obama’s fanboys and fangirls, and fortunately what they think makes Obama so awesome that it needs to be sung from the hilltops and paraded before the cameras is exactly what makes him completely unelectable.
This is just more proof that if Bush doesn’t attack and rip the arms off of his enemies, then Bush is going to be treated as if he has attacked, except he will only get the negative consequences and never the positive consequences for the attack. Why? Cause you can’t get the rewards of an attack if you 1. never made that attack 2. never succeeded with an attack.
Though mustn’t that mean a careful, calculated intent to persuade, to sway the ostensible pagans?
A conscientious and competent propagandist will do that. Those that eat up propaganda, however, are never conscientious or competent propagandists. They are just cannon fodder for other people’s propaganda.
Rather than a knee-jerk emotional response in the heat of an argument with them?
Knee Jerk emotional responses, when it is part of a longer range plan to manipulate people, is valid propaganda.
The bitter bottom line in the Times’ being “in the tank” for Obama is that the “press”–that institution recognized by the Framers in the Bill of Rights and postal subsidies, as well as given special consideration in countless Supreme Court decisions, in the name of an informed citizenry–doesn’t give a damn about an informed citizenry. Like Obama and the rest of our elitist government “representatives” they know better than us what our government should be. They will do what they can to bring that about–using all the advantages we’ve given them to inform us to rule us. Is that cynical, or what?
Equally depressing is the fact that our Congress parasites no longer consider us relevant. They are so remote from their constituencies they must depend upon the media to tell what what public opinion is; and the media, having abandoned the public interest to be propagandists, consider themselves the artibers of public opinion–or, more correctly, the arbiters of what public opinion ought to be. So, there is this incredible disconnect between a “representative government” and the citizenry that was so apparent in the illegal immigrant fiasco–a conflict far from over which ever candidate becomes president. McCain is a very stubborn man, as his prisoner ordeal makes plain. He will try to have his way regarding the illegals, and has said as much. Make no mistake, as an admiral’s son with a military tradition, it is McCain’s destiny to lead, to command, and ours to follow and obey. He is no less an elitist than Obama. The difference is, we hope, he want’s to lead to a better place than Obama does.
If the media would report the news and stop following a script things would be a lot different in this country. Neither McCain nor Obama would have gotten this far, and maybe Hillary too. I am not suprised that a post 911 Republicans might support McCain, but old timer Conservatives that that rely on the MSM and not alternative media got suckered into supporting McCain by dozens and dozens of media reports over the last few years where the Media held up McCain as the “Staight talking Maverick Republican”. It would take any other Republican wannabe hundreds of millions of dollars in spending to buy that kind of exposure. So the real conservatives in the race, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, were left to rot on the vine. Don’t even get me started about that Huckabee attracting “grass roots” support because he was a preacher. And I happen to like Baptists preachers, just not ones that support another governments colonization of the United States by means of 47 or so Consulates handing out Matricular Consular cards.
As for the disconnect between the Republicans and their shrinking constituency, see:
http://blog.nrcc.org/comment.cfm?entry_id=400
Personally, I think it would be best if our president was an elite specimen of humanity, but since it’s so much easier to con people into thinking someone’s an elite than it is to actually be one, our automatic suspicion of elitists is well founded. It is, however, critical that the entire population – elites, commoners, and handicapped – have a say in who should be leading them. Leaders who are put into their positions of leadership by any means other than the consent of those they lead, are leaders who will not care a whit about what happens to those they lead.
Of course, what is to be done when the people being led do not care about what happens to themselves, or even – as is becoming the case among a growing segment of the US population – despises and actively seeks the destruction of their neighbors? Then we get the breakdowns that lead to the abolition of democracy and the institution of totalitarian rule. We’ve already come a dangerously long way down that road, with the population consistently electing leaders based not on how well they lead, but on how much money they manage to pillage from elsewhere and dump into their district. Nobody cares about the “elsewhere” inevitably being another district in the US full of hardworking people who just happen to have no leaders as skilled at diverting funds from others. It’s a zero-sum game that we’ve trapped ourselves in, and when we can no longer profit from that, we will probably turn to a negative-sum game cleverly disguised as a positive-sum one.
I skim the New York Times daily and seem to have missed the alleged psycopathic episode about Bush’s speech.
What caught my attention more, by its absence, was discussion of the fact that the Bush administration itself has relied so heavily on what its supporters call appeasement. More important, its biggest successes to date have resulted directly from this kind of “appeasement.”
The biggest, clearest threat of nuclear terrorism comes from Pakistan, in that the country’s intelligence service gave birth to the Taliban and to this day is probably helping bin Laden hide. To date, the Bush administration has been utterly assiduous in its appeasement of the Mushareff regime and its intelligence service. Mushareff has spit in Bush’s face by refusing to even let our intelligence services interview AQ Khan, the father of the Islamic bomb and a man known to have sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Algeria and almost certainly others.
Here I happen to agree with the Bush administration’s approach. There are few other viable options. An invasion of Pakistan would lead directly to another Iraq-style catastrophe, and while the Mushareff regime–which itself is engaged in appeasing the radical Islamic factions–hasn’t been either a model of democracy, nor even an effective dictatorship, it hasn’t blown up into a civil war. At other times and in other places, that would hardly be called a victory, but relative to what’s happened elsewhere to U.S. allies in the region, we can safely put in the “not lost” column.
Then there’s Khadafy. He’s still a dictator, still brutal and still got U.S. blood on his hands. Meanwhile, American oil companies are busily wooing his regime for exploration, production and refining deals. And his country is either off the “list” of terrorist countries or soon will be.
Here again, it’s hardly a success to make emotional “the good guys win” movies about, but in the real world, we have to put it into the “not lost” category for the Bush administration.
But the biggest victory for appeasement is rather obviously the Bush administration’s rehash of the Clinton approach to North Korea. After years of fruitless confrontationalism, the Bush administratino was finally persuaded by the foreign policy career professionals to engage in what Bush supporters have called “appeasement.” The results have, again, been firmly in the “not lost” column.
So now we have Bush standing in front of the Knesset, a body peopled by a good many religious zealots who by the day are pushing their own nation further into isolation while failing utterly to destroy their multiplying enemies, saying appeasement doesn’t work.
How in the world does he get away with making that claim when the actions of his own administration and, more important, their results prove precisely the opposite?
No ad hominem responses please.
Here again, it’s hardly a success to make emotional “the good guys win” movies about, but in the real world, we have to put it into the “not lost” category for the Bush administration.
But the biggest victory for appeasement is rather obviously the Bush administration’s rehash of the Clinton approach to North Korea. After years of fruitless confrontationalism, the Bush administratino was finally persuaded by the foreign policy career professionals to engage in what Bush supporters have called “appeasement.” The results have, again, been firmly in the “not lost” column.
When you killed a man’s son and that man surrenders his weapons of mass destruction to you, that’s called surrender, not appeasement. Your definition of reality is very different from ours, Amanda.
North Korea is not working out precisely because Bush listened to his retarded advisers in allowing North Korea to sell weapons to Iran and every other country that can pay to prop up NK’s death machine of a government.
On another note, Bush’s views on North Korea are to get other people to the table and tell them to deal with North Korea, because North Korea is not a primary threat to the US while it is to China and Japan. The fact that China appeases and support North Korea as a buffer zone against both Japan and South Korea, which includes American forces in that region, is the primary point of contention here.
Appeasement as is known in the Democrat foreign policy camp is about unilateral actions using either bullying or bribery to get temporary benefits, resulting in popular acclaim and successful elections of Democrats, at the cost of long term death to Americans and American allies that can then be blamed on successive Republican administrations.
To date, the Bush administration has been utterly assiduous in its appeasement of the Mushareff regime and its intelligence service.
The Musharaff regime does not include the enemies of Musharaff and does that have sought to assassinate him, as they did to Bhutto.
The fact that you equate Bush’s treatment of Musharaff as being the same as Bush’s treatment of Musharaff’s enemies and Osama’s allies, does not do you any credit in this foreign policy round table game you seek to play.
How in the world does he get away with making that claim when the actions of his own administration and, more important, their results prove precisely the opposite?
I was wondering how you got away by justifying appeasement and the sacrifice of other people’s lives by using Bush’s own standards against him, while also saying Bush’s actions justify your views and not his.
Number 1, Bush’s views, positions, and actions produce consequences that cannot be accurately separated out individually when the intent is partisan gain.
Number 2, if Bush’s actions are successful in your view, this is because of Bush’s views and the policies he has allowed to come into play, not because of the success of what you see as appeasement.
Number 3, if appeasement works and Bush has been conducting it in contradiction to the media’s distortion of his words in public, then why are you, a fan of appeasement, against Bush and for Democrats like Obama or Hillary?
Number 4, the answer to number 3 is called “partisan gain” or otherwise known as “using the Rules of Engagement of the Marines to kill more Marines”.
All these examples, just as Reagan’s talks with Gorbachev, are not appeasement of insane intransigent enemies, but efficient diplomacy, urging opponents to cooperate. Bush specifically pointed out when diplomasy can work and when it can not. Religeous fanatics could not be coerced to cooperate, they can only be isolated and destroyed, and everything damaging these goals is conterproductive.
To the Democrats or their supporters, they think everybody can be talked to, that anyone can be dealt with via the “Deal”. It is the fundamental basis of all US politicians that they can get anything they want through “The Deal”. So long as you have what some other politician or figure of power wants, you can “Deal”.
When you look at the structure of Democrat power, meaning how they derive electoral victories, it is not far of a leap to understand how appeasement, giving your opponents what they want in return for what you want in the short term, is something Democrats both love yet abhor hearing since the reminder of Hitler+Chamberlain is not good PR and thus not good for Democrat power.
The one thing the history books still teach is that Chamberlain appeased Hitler and it failed. Since Democrat power is based off of turning Hitler into a traitor of socialist and communist principles, Democrats have too much invested to reverse the public trends on “appeasement”.
Democrats would much rather talk about diplomacy and coming to a greater understanding of each other, because that is how Democrats shackled African Americans in the United States once more when the Civil War broke those shackles before.
No ad hominem responses please.
Sorry, but you don’t get to dictate the kinds of responses you get, but the fact that you chose to try speaks volumes about you.
Pakistan is a powder keg all right, but it has been contained so far. At least they aren’t, at least that I know about, advocating or trying to destroy Israel. Sometimes you have to ally with some pretty nasty people, but sometimes that’s the best alternative. What would be yours?
Sergey brings up Reagan, saying: “All these examples, just as Reagan’s talks with Gorbachev, are not appeasement of insane intransigent enemies, but efficient diplomacy, urging opponents to cooperate.”
I agree. My point is that “efficient diplomacy” is dismissed by many Bush supporters as “appeasement” whenever it’s the product of a Democratic administration.
Reagan’s record, of course, includes more direct examples of appeasement. In response to the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed more than 200 Americans, he immediately withdrew the troops.
His response to the taking of hostages by Iranian agents was to offer them missiles in exchange for their influence in returning the hostages.
I defy anyone to come up with examples from a Democratic president that match the definition of appeasement as closely as the above examples do.
Amanda, you wrote:
…More important, its biggest successes to date have resulted directly from this kind of “appeasement.”
I disagree with you as to what constitute “the Bush administrations”…”biggest successes”. First on the list is ridding the Afghans of the rule of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Second, the so far successful installation of a government generally acceptable to Afghanis. Third on the list is ridding the world of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen/Baathists. Fourth, the establishment in his place of a moderate, democratic government in Iraq, which though not complete at this writing we can nevertheless see coming on in the near term. Was there appeasement in any of these acts?
Sdferr: In one sense, you are correct. If we ignore the costs and look only at the benefits, it’s clear that eliminating Saddam and unseating the Taliban were important, even spectacular, achievements.
But it makes more sense to measure a policy’s performance by comparing its benefits to its costs and against the alternatives. This is where Iraq war has failed and the Afghanistan war is in the process of failing.
There is a good chance the Afghanistan mission can be salvaged, but the costs of the Iraq debacle are already “sunk” regardless of the war’s final outcome.
I would also take issue with your characterization of the government of Iraq as moderate and democratic. It certainly has the potential to achieve either or both of those, but at present has not.
The idea that we are in a position to know whether the costs outweigh the benefits of being in Iraq is absurd. That evaluation is a long time off.
As for the media, I am more struck by the breathtaking incompetence than the pathetic propaganda.
Obama said, before he didn’t say it, that he’d meet with no preconditions.
That’s a waste of time for us, and a godsend for our nutty opponents.
IOW, appeasement.
The appeasement, however, is of the nutcase left in the US. What the result is among our enemies is hardly a concern.
Amanda,
Debacle? You, madam, are unhinged.
2400+ words and a few ovations and thats all america heard of what the president said.