Channeling Neville Chamberlain

President Bush once again waved the Bloody Allegation of Appeasement to trash a Democrat, in this case Barack Obama. For the record, I’m not as offended about this as is Will Bunch. Mostly I just find Bush’s little speech utterly pathetic.

Here’s the most unpopular president in our lifetime, a man whose foreign (as well as domestic) policies have been unmitigated and often unparalleled disasters, criticizing someone else regarding foreign policy. Frankly, Bush is so clueless that being criticized by him is something of an honor.

Here’s what Bush said:

“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.”

FYI, the American senator being referenced was Republican Senator William Borah (R-ID), a right-wing isolationist and Nazi sympathizer. This blogger has some good historical background.

If you watched Hardball tonight, you saw a wingnut radio talk-show mouthpiece named Kevin James who literally was screaming about appeasement and Neville Chamberlain. Chris Matthews put James on the spot to explain exactly what Neville Chamberlain did to earn the label of “appeasement.” It was obvious James had absolutely no clue. He was screaming that Obama was going to do “the exact same thing” that Chamberlain did, but it turns out that James had no idea what Chamberlain did. And Tweety called James pathetic. It was hysterical. I hope somebody makes a YouTube video of it; I’ll post it here.

I wrote a couple of years ago that righties don’t know what the word appeasement actually means. I’m glad Tweety is catching up to me.

Just for the record, I dug out an essay from last year that argues Bush is a lot more like Neville Chamberlain than, well, just about anybody.

Update: Here’s the video: