posted May 19, 2008
We all received another lesson in what we cannot talk about when discussing Sen. Obama. First we could not talk about his ears, then his church, then his pastor, then his middle name (Hussein), his color, his wife (who is not proud of this country until just recently), and now we can't talk about the history of appeasement.
The President pointed out his speech about past appeasement and how it led to millions of deaths was concerning Pres. Carter and not Obama. All national Democrat leaders including Obama have said that we should talk to our enemies because they will respect their words and lay down their weapons.
The President correctly pointed out that a liberal, who thought he could talk Hitler out of killing millions, was wrong. He did not just make a simple mistake though, he told everyone they had peace and so millions would die because they did not prepare for war. Obama is in the same mold. He has said he would meet with Iran's nut leader without preconditions. There is no reason to meet with him since he supports terrorists all over the world. Also his words will not change the minds of these killers.
History has proven over and over that force is necessary at times. Obama tried to use Kennedy as an example of talking to Khrushchev as a time that led to peace in 1961. But he left out that in 1962 we had the Cuban missile crisis 16 months after they talked. This is why national Democrat leaders cannot be trusted with the security of this country. They will wait to be attacked again before they do anything and then they probably launch missiles like Clinton did so he would not have any military deaths on his record.
I know many believe peace can be achieved by talking but they have nothing in history to back it up. Sometimes wars don't lead to peace either because the war is stopped at a stalemate rather than finishing the war. The greatest example though is WWII and without total surrender we would not have had the safety that most of us enjoyed for 50 years. I know my family is safer because of the stories that most of you have not read which point out we are still taking the battle to the terrorists. There have two recent missile hits on terrorist leaders in past few weeks around the world and this could not have been done if we were not engaging the enemy everywhere. There was also a story that Al Qaeda has even put out a statement that their attacks are down by 94%. This didn't happen by talking to them. This is the only way to deal with type of enemy and Iran's leadership, Hezbollah, and Hamas are they the same.
Obama is just dangerously wrong.
Bruce Caldwell
Signal Mountain
sarmatt25@comcast.net
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Bruce Caldwell must have taken the Bush doctrine and the neo-conservative agenda to heart and from what I can tell thinks that peace through domination is possible. He is dangerously wrong. Pax Romana is a fine example of the successes of this doctrine. so is Apartheid South Africa, Rwanda, Darfur, Israeli policy with regard to Palestine and now Pax Americana. Our country has subscribed to a "Peace through Strength" policy since the late 70s, which is faulty in concept also, but sometimes successful ONLY when coupled with diplomacy and negotiation. Mr Caldwell and Mr. Bush apparently do not understand that appeasement is not diplomacy.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, diplomacy is diplomacy. Negotiation is negotiation. Appeasement is appeasement. They are different things. The lines between them can be blurred, but they can also be kept crystal clear. We do not appease when we negotiate.
If anything has ever been disproved by history, it is that talking will lead to slaughter of holocaust proportions. This was the standard argument during the cold war, that Eisenhower and Truman were appeasing the soviets by trying to coexist with communism and prevent the spread of it. The conservatives argued that communism was evil and had to be eradicated. They said that it was appeasement to contain it. In hindsight this is absurd and these progressive policies of negotiation are what defeated the Soviet Union(figuratively speaking of course).
There are a few things about Mr. Caldwell's letter and Bush's speech that confound me. The first is that you somehow indicted Sen. Borah for the death of millions since they were not prepared for war. I can think of nothing more far from the truth. It is also very ironic that Bush held up Sen. Borah for ridicule rather that his grandfather, Prescott Bush,who was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from and collaborated with key financial backers of Nazi Germany.
That business relationship continued after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and even after Germany declared war on the United States following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It stopped only when the U.S. government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the “Trading with the Enemy Act.”
Next is the example that Mr. Caldwell used for the follies of negotiation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't think that he realizes that there was no violent act involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, due to the diligent 'negotiation' between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Mr. Caldwell also said of peace through negotiation, there is "nothing in history to back it up". I would say that diplomacy is the only thing that has ever worked. some examples of negotiations that stopped a vicious circle of violence and took steps toward peace and reconciliation are Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978, to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, to Frederik Willem de Klerk and Nelson Mandela in 1993. We could add the Teddy Roosevelt whose intervention stopped the violence between Russia and Japan, and many, many more.
Mr. Caldwell and people with his beliefs use Hitler, WW II, the good war. Every enemy is not Hitler and we did not need to kill over 100,000 in the firebombing of Dresden to rid the world of Hitler. How can we say that talking to our enemy doesn't work if we haven't tried.
Mr. Caldwell, have you considered how well the tactic of calling the leader of Iran "a nut leader" would work. That is exactly the type of methods that George Bush has used that have been so damaging to our country and it's image abroad. The bully always loses out in the long run. Our country is sick and tired of this macho, ignorant stance and will show this in November when we will be able to celebrate our first President of color.
John Zachary
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