MADDOW: Do you think this is something new? Do you think this is something specific to our current, contemporaneous politics that we have these sort of buzzwords and bumper sticker slogans, whether it’s ‘appeasement,’ or ‘fight over there so we don’t fight them here’ or ‘they hate our freedom,’ any of these terms. Are they designed to be repeated and not to be interrogated?
MATTHEWS: Well, just look at the way people are basically exterminated or tried to be exterminated. Bill Maher makes a comment –which may not have been the right comment–but he was making a point he was trying to make, about stand back weaponry compared to people killing themselves. You can argue about the niceties of that. The Dixie Chicks say something about the war—and they shouldn’t have said it overseas, but they said it. The shutting up of opposition is critical to running a country in an undemocratic way, let’s put it that way. And so you have buzzwords like ‘appeasers’ or ‘cut and run’ and they’re used over and over again by the most mindless people. The trouble with them is they tend to work. The dittoheads can use them. Anyone can use them and they seem to have the same effect. They cause people to run from criticism.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Maddow/Matthews on appeasement flap
Ollie North, "history guy"?
For someone who was lucky not to have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates, he’s got some nerve touching this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn’t just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.
Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News’ “history guy” is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool.
Word!
yelling "appeasement"
if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.He goes through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan administration examples. It's insane. These people are warmongering psychopaths at every turn. They do not change their tune. Our foreign policy successes have for 60 years come when they are ignored, either by Democrats or by their own party. Even in Bush II:
The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya -- an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement" -- it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.)But nooooo, can't talk to Iran. What ignorance.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
more appeasement
From the conclusion:
Assign this as an optional reading during Hitler week, to remind how history is used in public discourse.The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.
If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
epic Godwin battle of the century
First, Bush violates all kinds of political norms in going off on Obama (well, his favorite "some people") during a speech to the Knesset for Israel's 60th anniversary.
Second, Democrats and tv journalists go nuts blowing his lame comments away. (Especially on the heels of yesterday's idiotic "I quit golf" lies.) Biden calls "bullshit" -- LITERALLY.
Third, some absolutely psychotic right-wing talk show host (Kevin James, apparently - no, not that one!) goes on Hardball to try and defend the comments and attack Obama. Pulls out all the appeasement b.s he's been trained to do... and Matthews asks a simple question: "What did Neville Chamberlain do?" Hilarity ensues.
Salon War Room's summary:
Matthews asked James a simple question: What exactly did Chamberlain do that was so wrong? (The following is a close paraphrase of the ensuing exchange.)Pretty much sums it up. The whole segment has to be seen to be believed. James was screaming and finger pointing from his first words. Matthews was bemused at first, then ripped him a new one. One of the more amazing takedowns of recent tv gabfests. Matthews absolutely destroyed him -- "if you don't know what appeasement is, don't talk about it!"Well, he was an appeaser, James exclaimed.
Yeah, but what did he do?
He was an appeaser!
Kevin, what exactly did Chamberlain do?
He appeased!
Definitely one to show the kids in class. How NOT to do historical analogies. You can't just throw out buzzwords, you have to define them with details.