There's a big flap today about
President Bush's remarks in the Israeli Knesset to the effect that Obama is an appeaser a la American isolationists pre-World War II.
The controversy hinges on the following quote from Bush:
"Some seem to believe 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 only I could have talked to Hitler, all of 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."
Now, which American senator was that, exactly?
Looking for the source of the quote, I stumbled across this
2006 piece by Charles Krauthammer denouncing Ned Lamont and other antiwar Democrats following Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman that year. Krauthammer gives the same quote as Bush, but mentions a name:
William Borah. Borah served as Senator from Idaho from 1907 until his death in 1940.
And oh yeah. Borah was a Republican at a time when(*)Republican isolationists like
Robert Taft urged against helping the Allies in World War II.
You see, we love to remember how America won World War II. But we tend to forget that it was a Democrat at the helm. We don't remember Alf Landon or Wendell Willkie as the men who helped save the world.
The whole myth of Democrats being soft on defense spits in the face of history. Both parties have shown poor judgment about which wars to fight, especially in the postwar era, but Democrats have shown better judgment. It was Democratic leadership that won World War II, and it will be Democratic leadership that gets us out of the partisan-generated fiasco in Iraq.
And if you think that "you" or "we" won World War II, Doug Stanhope has some words for you.
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