Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement" | Seattle Times Newspaper Blog

Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement" | Seattle Times Newspaper Blog

Wow, defending Obama and attacking Bush by saying the Hitler's demands in 1938 were reasonable.  Sadly, I suspect many in the Democrat party would agree with this opinion writer.

 

Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement"

Posted by Bruce Ramsey

Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable, according to the prevailing idea of the nation-state. His claim was that the German-speaking areas of Europe--and ones that thought of themselves as German --be under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.