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If the shoe fits… An insight into what is at stake in the upcoming election
The recent back and forth between President Bush and his possible Democratic successor, Barack Obama, over Bush’s comments on appeasement before the Israeli parliament, offers an insight into what is at stake in the upcoming election. That the president should offer his thoughts on how the U.S. should deal with unfriendly powers and draw lessons from history strikes many as imminently reasonable. It struck others as a veiled attack on a specific candidate. Obama’s campaign claimed Bush was after their candidate when he spoke in Israel. The president’s office has said he was referring to former President Carter’s meetings with Hamas leaders. Perhaps what’s missing in all of this is some consensus about what everyone is talking about when the word appeasement is used. A good place to start is with William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” a volume that weighs about as much as a sack of sugar in its hard cover version. It covers the period leading up to the Second World War in great detail, not to mention the war itself. It takes awhile to read, but gives an excellent account of what the policy of appeasement by the French and British governments in the 1930’s achieved. Which, if you want to state it simply is this: World War II. Shirer makes it clear that at several steps along the way if Britain and France had shown some backbone and stood up to the Nazi dictator Hitler, his government would have fallen. No historical analogy is perfect, of course, and some might call it a stretch to compare the figures of today with Adolph Hitler. And whether or not talking to them without preconditions, as Obama advocates, equals appeasement, is subject to debate. But a few things are clear. The Obama folks are mighty touchy on the subject, and the most recent example of trying to give a madman what he wants didn’t work out so well. It’s something that will come up over and over again as voters try to decide if the junior senator from Illinois is up to the job of leading the country, or is in water over his head. (2) Comments • Email This Article |
