Friday, May 16, 2008

A little defensive, are we?

Yesterday, President Bush delivered a long speech to the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) in which he extolled the virtues of Israel and spoke glowingly of the long friendship between the two countries: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080515-1.html. During one part of of his speech, he spoke about unnamed individuals who want to negotiate with dicators and terrorists. His exact words are as follows:

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it."

Apparently, these words ticked off more than a few Democrats. The statesmanlike Senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, called them "bulls--t" (http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0508/Biden_Bushs_comments_were_bullshit.html). Presidential hopeful Barack Obama whined that the remarks constituted an unfair attack upon him (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668647342&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

You have to think that that the reason the Democrats were so peeved about the speech was because it hit so close to home. The fact that President Bush was taking a swipe not at Mr. Obama but at President Peanut Farmer seems to matter not in the least to them.

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