From the president’s press conference this morning:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. It’s a very busy time. If I may, I’d like to ask you about two other important issues in the news. Republican candidates have taken aim at your approach to foreign policy, particularly the Middle East and Israel, and accused you of appeasement. I wanted to get your reaction to that…
THE PRESIDENT: Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22-out-of-30 top al Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that…
Of course, this is a response to the spectacle of six Republican presidential candidates appearing before the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C. yesterday and uniformly accusing the president of appeasing Iran and the Palestinians. It shouldn’t need to be said, but the word “appeasement” calls to mind the actions of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the Munich Conference in 1938. When he let Adolf Hitler take over Czechoslovakia without a fight, he lost his last opportunity to stop World War Two and the Holocaust. Using such loaded language to describe the president in front of a Jewish audience is both tasteless and outrageous.
It’s nice to see the president push back forcibly on that kind of rhetoric.
Maybe you think it`s nice. As one who snorted at the videos – and other fakery – and recalls that it was inconvenient to supply the Afghan government with one scintilla of cause for extraditing a Saudi prince who happened to have been Bush`s banker and loyal CIA tool – the murder of an unknown promoted to have been a man who was dying a decade ago just perpetuates the al CIA duh fantasy foisted on the world.
If you think Obama`s ability to murder at will is so great, you must be ecstatic that it has just been extended to include everyone – U.S. citizens in their homes included.Thank the Senate. Habeas Corpus and Due Process are even more smothered than the PATRIOT Act provided.
Drones R Us has a ring to it, don`t you think
Give me a break.
you’ve got a lot swirling around upstairs. Bush’s banker? I think you’re talking about one of UBL’s ninety-seven half-brothers.
I do love how self-proclaimed skeptics like this individual find Mullah Omar’s offer to extradite his son-in law/head of his armed forces/major funder to a western government for crimes involving killing non-Muslims so credible.
What is it that makes the head of the Taliban look like such a rock-solid, honest person in your eyes?
Do you imagine he was committed to seeing that justice was done for jihid-inspired murders?
Is it that well-known habit of Pashtuns to deny aid to their guests and family members?
Perhaps, at some point after the slaughter of the Iranian embassy staff, he developed an abiding concern for international law?
No, wait, I know: it must his well-known opposition to the waging of war against civilians by those seeking to promote Islam.
Yes, that last one probably explains why such a worldly truth-teller like yourself reflexively takes the work of a butcher like Mullah Omar at face value.
Obama has performed well in the war on terror. After all, he has largely continued the policies of the evil George W. Bush!
right, like invading the wrong countries and saying he didn’t pay a lot of thought to bin-Laden.
Why did he change his mind about “Gitmo”?
In this case you’re like a creationist, because I am almost 99% certain you’ve asked Booman that question before and he’s answered it.
“So if humans evolved from common ancestors why are there still apes?”
“It doesn’t work that way. long winded explanation.”
…30 minutes later of arguing
“So if humans evolved from common ancestors why are there still apes?”
On and on the troll train.
Seabe…I don’t recall asking Boo about Gitmo, but I’ll do an archive search of my comments just to make sure.
He didn’t change his mind. Obama is not a dictator and cannot force Congress to shut down Gitmo. And you know full well why they don’t want to shut Gitmo. It’s because of cowardly, piss-your-pants people like yourself.
Sorry, Ishmael…if Obama really wanted it closed, it would be closed.
Here’s what happened…Obama campaigned as an idealist, then, upon taking office, was briefed on the brutal reality on the war on terror…
Then he made the right decision.
Bush set up our quite effective infrastructure to fight the war on terror…once Obama was privvy to the facts, he realized, to the degree than any Progressive could, the true value of that infrastructure…
Obama’s continuation of our strategy is THE singular area of his pathetic Presidency in which he deserves kudos…
You are so full of shit.
link
The above comments are bullsh…..
Obama is the moth.. fuc…. Commander-in-Chief…
Gitmo is a moth.. fuc… military installation…
Bull…Fuc….Sh..
At least I edit my vulgar language!
They really need to start teaching civics in the public schools again.
I’m just embarrassed for you now.
I wish they would teach civics, too…
How many elementary students, for example, can nsme the author of the Declaration of Independence (hint: Thomas Jefferson)…and the primary author of the Constitutions (hint: James Madison)
I learned this in third grade.
That’s not civics, it’s history.
Civics deals with how the government works.
I believe you know history.
The Congress shall have Power To… make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water…To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
If Obama really wanted a sizeable Dem majority in the House, I imagine you would think he’d have it as well.
Liberty For All, perhaps the reason you (and some others) think that President Obama “has largely continued the policies of…George W. Bush” is that by the summer of 2008, President Bush had, to a significant degree, changed his own policies in the Iraq War.
Most of those changes were, coincidentally or not, changes that then-Senator Obama had been advocating for some time, and had pledged to initiate if elected president. So, for example, the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq by the end of this month is being done in accordance with an agreement Pres. Bush’s administration negotiated and signed with the Iraqi government.
It’s an understandable mistake—despite the marked differences between the two administrations in their approaches to the Afghanistan War and towards al-Qaeda.
“Obama has performed well in the war on terror. After all, he has largely continued the policies of the evil George W. Bush!”
Then why is bin Laden dead?
Why are the last American troops exiting Iraq?
Why is single person detained for plotting terrorist attacks on the US since Obama came to office being processed through the civilian justice system? (You do know that not a single person has been sent to Gitmo under Obama, right?)
Why hasn’t he started a single war since coming to office?
Appeasement is a policy of offering blandishments to hostile powers – given them something they want – in order to maintain good relations with them.
For example, Chamberlain agreed to abrogate Britain’s treaties, include the peace agreement that ended World War One, and allow Germany to march into various countries, in exchange for (he hoped) peace.
Of course, Obama has never offered a single blandishment to Iran or any other hostile county in the Middle East. (I supposed you could count his decision not to build the missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic as an appeasement of Russia, but that’s not what the Republicans are talking about).
As used by Republicans, however, appeasement means “not taking hostile action.” Just as opponents of the Iraq War never offered a single thing to the Saddam regime, neither has Obama given up anything to Iran, or to al Qaeda, or to any other hostile force.