May 17, 2008
OMG, would you just please look it up in Wikipedia?
Here’s 9 minutes of Chris Matthews trying to get a hollerin’ right-wing radio host to acknowledge that he (the host) doesn’t know what “appeasement” means. Clearly, neither does President Bush.
The notion that it’s weak to talk with your enemies is even more dangerous than the Bush preemption policy. If you don’t talk, you use force. Force is expensive. Force kills innocents. Force kills Americans. Force is wildly ineffective. Force makes peace harder to bring about. That’s why force is a last resort. The problem is, Bush doesn’t have a first resort.
That’s why during the cold war, every president spoke with the Soviet leaders, even while the Soviets were a launch-code away from obliterating us with nuclear weapons. Of course you talk with your enemies. What are we, inarticulate Huns? Blood-raged animals? Implacable minions of death? Jeez!
Talking with your enemies doesn’t mean you incrementally give them what they want in the naive hope that they’ll stop with that. That would be, um, appeasement. But refusing to talk with your enemies is — I don’t know what other word to use — wickedness.
