[KnowItAll]

YouTube - Bush Compares Obama to Nazi Appeasers

What do you think? I sort of agree with him for once... you cannot negotiate with some types of people.

Needless to say, the speech was made in Israel ... so he was probably trying to appease another group.

[KnowItAll]

YouTube - Hardball: Joe Biden On Bush's...

Biden's response...

[Football16]

Officially, yes. You cannot negotiate with some people. In the real world, it is not how the best governments work. They work best with back channels to the enemy. They use countries or people friendly to both sides to talk to the others (all not official) to find common ground. However, that is in traditional battles where it is one country having a dispute with another.

The problem right now is who is the enemy? It is stateless terrorism that the world faces now albeit supported tacitly by some countries. It is hard to know who to negotiate with in that context as there is nothing to settle.

Osama got what he wanted from America after 911. The Bush response at home and abroad including taking out Iraq's Saddam has done more to further the cause of Osama's lunatics than anything his ranting lunatic religious zealots could have accomplished at the mosque.

What should concern all of us is the number of potential fanatics that are out there. By potential, I mean people of his faith who are young or not born yet, but who are or who will grow up in countries where they are not mainstream and don't have the jobs to get involved. I know the British fanatics included medical doctors but by and large the usual fanatic is likely to be uneducated and not participating successfully in the economy.

There is no way out of Iraq now for years but the USA must find ways to build bridges to Middle East countries not bomb them. The more countries are mainstream economies the less likelihood of war or even tacit support for terrorists.

[hullexile]

Originally Posted by Football16

Officially, yes. You cannot negotiate with some people. In the real world, it is not how the best governments work. They work best with back channels to the enemy. They use countries or people friendly to both sides to talk to the others (all not official) to find common ground. .

That is exactly how the UK successfully handled the Northern Ireland situation. Officially saying there were no negotiations but unofficially doing just that.

The problem with saying you can't negotiate with some people is that you can not defeat them militarily either (limit perhaps but not defeat).

[Football16]

Bush said in video (got from news article):

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with 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."

--

I think the only thing that will go down in history is that this is the dumbest POTUS ever elected, not once but twice. What a sad commentary on our times.

I guess it is good to mention Hitler in front of a Jewish audience. The irony is that the United States not only didn't enter the first World War early, it failed to do so in the very war he is referencing in this speech! So much for a good knowledge of history.

How would he explain the world re-welcoming Muammar al-Gaddafi and Libya back to the good side of the ledger with this thinking?

Wikipedia:

In August 2003, two years after Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's conviction, Libya wrote to the United Nations formally accepting 'responsibility for the actions of its officials' in respect of the Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay compensation of up to $2.7 billion – or up to $10 million each – to the families of the 270 victims. The same month, Britain and Bulgaria co-sponsored a U.N. resolution which removed the suspended sanctions. (Bulgaria's involvement in tabling this motion led to suggestions that there was a link with the HIV trial in Libya in which 5 Bulgarian nurses, working at a Benghazi hospital, were accused of infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV.)[5] Forty per cent of the compensation was then paid to each family, and a further 40% followed once U.S. sanctions were removed. Because the U.S. refused to take Libya off its list of state sponsors of terrorism, Libya retained the last 20% ($540 million) of the $2.7 billion compensation package.

On June 28, 2007 Megrahi was granted the right to a second appeal against the Lockerbie bombing conviction.[6] One month later, the Bulgarian medics were released from jail in Libya. They returned home to Bulgaria and were pardoned by Bulgarian president, Georgi Parvanov.

[Sleuth]

Ummmm, I don't read nor hear where Bush mentions Obama. Or even the Democratic party. Even that Senator from 1939 was a Republican.
Gulity mind?
Football 16--what appeasement was there before WW1? And, regardless of that answer, what should the US in particular have learned from WW1 that would have prompted early entry into WW2? And I presume by "early entry" you mean actual boots on the ground and not FDR's policy of say, giving Britain war ships?
Seems to me Bush is saying we should learn from history/WW2 and not appease today. Your comment suggests the US missed some lesson from WW1? Or that Bush is to blame for the slow entry into WW2?

[Claire ex-ax]

Dubya has forgotten his family history. Grandpappy Prescott Bush aided the Nazi war machine.

There are files in the US National Archives showing that a firm of which Grandpappy Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings with Hilter's Germany only stopped when his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Based on the files, two former slave labourers at Auschwitz have brought a civil action in Germany against the Bush family for damages.

But wait there's more. He said this garbage against appeasement in Israel - a country which sponsors state terrorism and which the US has appeased for 60 years.

[Hamton]

So many big companies were involved in the support of Nazi Germany.

IBM created the systems for the Nazis to organise the war and tag people in the holocaust, Ford and General Motors built Nazi tanks and trucks, Hugo Boss designed the uniforms, the list goes on. I'm sure most of the politicians have some skeletons in the closet.

Many of those are arguably not as bad as companies like Google and Yahoo today, actively censoring the internet in China and propping up tyrant governments.

But I'm sure shit like that's been going on since the dawn of time.

[hullexile]

Originally Posted by Hamton

So many big companies were involved in the support of Nazi Germany.

IBM created the systems for the Nazis to organise the war and tag people in the holocaust, Ford and General Motors built Nazi tanks and trucks, Hugo Boss designed the uniforms, the list goes on. I'm sure most of the politicians have some skeletons in the closet.

Many of those are arguably not as bad as companies like Google and Yahoo today, actively censoring the internet in China and propping up tyrant governments.

But I'm sure shit like that's been going on since the dawn of time.

I think arguing that censoring the internet in China is worse than supplying the Nazi regime would take some doing.

[kombuchakid]

said this, at the World Economic Forum?
--
There are people who claim that democracy is incompatible with Islam. But the truth is that democracies, by definition, make a place for people of religious belief. America is one of the most — is one of the world’s leading democracies, and we’re also one of the most religious nations in the world. More than three-quarters of our citizens believe in a higher power. Millions worship every week and pray every day. And they do so without fear of reprisal from the state. In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam. Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection.

Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy. But true democracy requires vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate. True democracy requires the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election’s legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear or intimidation.

Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail. America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down, and dissidents whose voices are stifled. The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with dignity and the respect they deserve. I call on all nations to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate, and trust their people to chart their future. (Applause.)