The Right is still trying to paint Barack Obama as an “appeaser.” In a hopelessly muddled column that, I believe, originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick argues that talking to Iran would be appeasement. Glick writes,
OBAMA’S RESPONSE to Bush’s speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.
This, of course, is a flat-out lie. Obama’s position is that talking is not the same thing as appeasing, which happens to be true. Look it up.
Glick continues,
Obama and his supporters argue that seeking to ease Iranian belligerence by conducting negotiations and offering military, technological, military and financial concessions to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who refers to Israel as pestilence, daily threatens the Jewish state with destruction, and calls for the eradication of the US while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago is not appeasement.
I don’t have time to do an exhaustive search, but when did Obama say he intended to offer “military, technological, military and financial concessions” to anybody? The controversy over Obama’s position, I thought, was that he intends to have talks without “preconditions,” meaning (to me) that any deals that might be struck would be a result of talks, not that talks would be the result of a deal.
Obama recalls that US presidents have often conducted negotiations with their country’s enemies and done so to the US’s advantage. And this is true enough. President John F. Kennedy essentially appeased the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when he offered to remove US nuclear warheads from Turkey in exchange for the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba.
I believe that is, in fact, what happened.
But there are many differences between what Kennedy did and what Obama is proposing. Kennedy’s offer to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was made secretly. And the terms of the deal stipulated that if its existence was revealed, the US offer would be cancelled.
Exactly why does secrecy make the deal less of an “appeasement”? Later in the article Glick says Obama “wants to undermine US credibility while giving Ahmadinejad and his murderous ilk the legitimacy that Kennedy refused to give Khrushchev.” Legitimacy? What did legitimacy have to do with anything then? I recall Kennedy had face-to-face meetings with Khrushchev at some other point in his presidency, as did Eisenhower. Our heads of state in those days were not burdened by the Bushies’ childish attitude that we should punish people we don’t like by not talking to them.
As I remember it — again, I’m sorry I don’t have time for history research this morning — the negotiations over the Cuban missiles were kept secret to allow both governments to stand down from the crisis without losing face to their respective citizens. Kennedy had been concerned that if he attacked Cuba, the Soviets would retaliate by attacking West Berlin. Basically what happened is that while publicly saber-rattling, privately the Kennedy Administration was willing to concede a great deal to the Soviets to prevent war. And vice versa.
More importantly, Khrushchev was open to a deal and was ready to give up the Cuban nuclear program. And – most importantly of all – Kennedy deployed military forces and went to the brink of war to make the alternatives to negotiation credible.
Kennedy didn’t want war, but Khrushchev didn’t want war, either. This made for a decent basis for striking a deal. I agree that Teddy R.’s advice to carry a big stick probably is still operative, but I haven’t heard that Obama plans to dismantle the U.S. military. Oh, wait …
Obama has repeatedly stated that unlike Kennedy, if he is elected president, he will not openly threaten war while being open to private talks. Instead, Obama intends to surrender the war option while conducting direct, public negotiations with the mullahs.
The plain fact is that the stick’s not as big as it used to be. Back in the day the Soviets rightly feared us, as we feared them. But after getting bogged down in Iraq all these years, who’s afraid of us now?
And saying that one will not openly threaten war is not the same thing as surrendering the “war option.” But to threaten a war option we must have a credible war option, and thanks to Iraq I don’t think we do.
Far from exerting force to strengthen his diplomatic position, Obama has pledged to withdraw US forces from Iraq where they are fighting Iranian proxies, cut military spending and shrink the size of the US nuclear arsenal.
We need to talk about military priorities. Every day we spend in Iraq whittles the stick down a little more. Talk to people in the military, and they will tell you they are seriously concerned about our military readiness. Once we’re out of Iraq it’s going to take years to build the military back up to what it was before we invaded. Military spending needs to be redirected toward restoring our military instead of pouring whatever billion dollars we pour every month into the sands of Iraq.
Put another way, Iraq is the biggest reason we’re neither feared nor respected any more. “Shock and awe” devolved into disgust and ridicule.
SINCE THE definition of appeasement is to reward others for their bad behavior, and since the US has refused for 29 years to reward the Iranians for their bad behavior by having presidential summits with Iranian leaders, Obama’s pledge represents a massive act of appeasement.
Let’s see, what is the definition of appeasement? The American Heritage dictionary defines it as “The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace.” But merely talking to someone is not appeasement. Again we see right-wingers thinking like eight-year-olds who punish other children they don’t like by refusing to sit next to them.
The notion that we are “rewarding” somebody by engaging in negotiations assumes that the heads of hostile governments actually feel bad that we won’t talk to them, or that our mere presence at a negotiating table is a special privilege only to be handed out to the deserving. This is the way children think.
And as Glick says, we’ve not held summits with the leaders of Iran for 29 years. We can see how well that’s turned out.
Glick goes on and on, and I’m out of time to write further, but skipping down to the last paragraph she says “in a world in which evil men are combining and preparing for war and genocide, good men are preparing for pleasant chitchat with their foes because they have come to prefer attitude to substance.”
Preferring attitude over substance is a brilliant description of the Bush Administration’s approach to foreign policy. The Bushies have no substance; they just whip out their ever-shrinking sticks (double meaning intended) and threaten to hit everyone they don’t like. The challenge to an Obama administration will be to put aside the attitude and embrace substance. I don’t know if that will work, but it’s worth a try. Nobody’s done it in a while.
Great post, Maha. Glick’s article is just one more example – and this year’s political landscape is rife with them – of the ‘operation straw man’ schtick applied to political issues.
The problem is, I think, that the interpretation of an issue, the straw man, becomes the issue and then becomes a virus that spreads and persists among the electorate, at that point almost impossible to eradicate.
How else to explain the fact that practically no one, in print or out, thinks to lay bare the 8 year record of Bush’s disastrous foreign policies which will immediately reveal that more of the same will only guarantee a repeat of the disasters.
“For the last 29 years?”
So all that talk about Bush I and William Casey’s secret negotiations to delay the release of the hostages until after the election is idle chatter and that Iran-Contra thing was all some sort of dream. I must have eaten a bit too much Welsh Rarebit before retiring.
I feelbetter now.
This entire situation, not of Obamas making but rather Bush’s and the medias, has gone way past silly but I suppose it needs to run its course because, after all, our President made an issue out of it.
I can’t help but suspect a subtle double standard of many who rubberneck at this ugly accident (well, not literally since Bush crafted it) at the Knesset.
So if Bush, the supreme leader decides to talk with foreign leaders (or send someone else to do so) he undoubtedly reports back as having been “tough on them” but if another would do the same they would be giving away the farm. The convenient conflation od discussion with concession and appeasement is a sight to behold and defies rationality.
It is a little hard to reason with anyone espousing such logic. Even if Obama demonstrates notthing except progress from talking with unwieldy axis of evil leaders, in the minds of conservative followers to which Bush’s encoded message was addressed Obama will always be “just about to” give away the farm because he is not Bush.
We’ve heard this ignorance time and time again. He is going to appease because he’s a liberal. That’s what liberals do.
This Chamberlain meme has been going around for a long time. I’ve had it used on me in discussion many times. They must be getting low on ammo or getting to the bottom of their bag of dirty tricks.
The problem for us is that there’s absolutely no downside to them telling these lies. They get us in the left into a reaction cycle and by the time we’re able to swat it down, (a) they’re on to the next lie in the pre-approved program, and (b) the uneducated electorate is bored with the story, only getting the accusation, not the response, before switching their TV to Dancing with the Stars or whatever.
We’ve been in this pattern for the last umpteen elections. I love it if we could find a way to get ahead of the cycle and put THEM on the defensive for once.
It really helped me understand the foreign policy ‘ideas’ of the rightwing when I came to understand that their reverence for the president and unthinking, skin-deep faux patriotism has led them to believe that simply sitting down with the president of the US is, in and of itself, a reward. They really seem to believe that leaders of other countries are pining away, hoping against hope that someday they just might get to maybe get the president’s autograph or something… And when one of the lucky few get their chance at an Audience with His Eminence, all the other world leaders are just sooooooooooo jealous they could just DIE!
Pretty much the whole reason the president exists is to sit down with foreign heads of state to facilitate negotiations.
-me
goatherd — those weren’t “summits,” so to Glick they don’t count. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.
Call me naive, but I think politically these dust-ups help Obama against McCain. First, they expose McCain as a nasty, double-talking slimeball, but more important, they give Obama a chance to talk tough and smart on national security, thereby putting him on an equal-or-better footing than McCain. His arguments that McCain is just following the failed Bush foreign policies give him (Obama) a chance to flesh out his arguments for diplomacy, and I think they could make people more comfortable that he’s capable of the job as C-inC.
If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me.
Bruce K
“… while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago …”
A pie-throwing contest regarding articles of faith that seem illogical, improbable or eccentric is a contest that no Jew or Christian should want to get into.
Merriam-Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary has a useful definition. The third definition is the one that applies here: “Pacify, Conciliate: esp : to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usu. at the sacrifice of principles.”
Obama is no appeaser but he does have principles.
If one is constantly sacrificing their principles, as Bush and McCain have done so frequently this year, then any point they’re supposedly trying to make is reduced to desperation and pathetic name calling and nothing more. That defines the failed leaders of the Republican Party in the 2008 election.
Obama has pledged to … cut military spending …
Really?
From his foreign policy position page:
Expand the Military: We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.
I believe Glick’s source for this claim is the ever authoritative Some Guy With A Blog, possibly this guy, who interprets a video statement in which Obama lists specific defense items he’d cut or freeze(e.g., “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems”) as evidence that he’s “way too eager to cut defense spending” overall.
To Craig – Bush has no principles to sacrifice. The man is absolutely soulless.
Hello, I’m posting here for the first time. I love this site and think you are wonderful.
It’s too early for me to do much research but I think I remember that Kennedy would not remove the missiles from Turkey and then the Cuban crisis followed. I don’t remember if they were removed to avoid the crisis, but I sure remember Nikki banging his shoe on the table at the U.N; as far as I know he did not give a speech at Columbia University.with or without protesters.
At any rate, in the reality based world appeasement does not mean what the Bushies think and as you said, only a childish person would equate negotiating with appeasement; he never negotiates, not even with the Dems. in Congress. Come to think of it he doesn’t negotiate with his own party either.
Sondra
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Sondra
Maha said, “Military spending needs to be redirected toward restoring our military instead of pouring whatever billion dollars we pour every month into the sands of Iraq.”
I feel we leftists need to be very clear when discussing the looting of the US treasury by the GOP leadership. That sentence should read:
“Instead of shipping pallet-loads of fresh cash to the bank vaults of the War Profiteers: Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, et al.”
We leftists need to remind everyone that war profiteering is immoral. We need to make sure that every one is painfully aware that these hundreds of billions of dollars are being handed over by the freight-train load to un-American companies (Halliburton is no longer a US company) solely so that they can post record profits for their shareholders.
Every American needs to understand that the Conservative Republican drive for ever-growing profits requires many more dead and maimed soldiers and civilians. For profits to grow, the war also needs to grow. If the war decreases, so do the profits of the CEOs whose sole source of income is more dead Americans — forever.