President Bush's Despicable Attack on Barack Obama by John Kerry

[ProSense]

Video includes Kerry's response on MSNBC

President Bush's Despicable Attack on Barack Obama

By John Kerry - May 15, 2008, 2:28PM

I've been writing this week about the Republican leadership's insulting and destructive attempt to use outright lies to try to smear Barack Obama's steadfast commitment to Israel.

Well now President Bush joins the chorus of Republican attacks, pushing the Bush/McCain "argument" of smears and misleading attacks:

In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.

"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," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "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."

Where to even start?

First, it's absolutely shameless that an American President would use a speech in front of a foreign government to launch such a petty political attack. President Bush has abused the dignity of the office in ways that make especially ironic his long ago pledge to "restore dignity and integrity to the Oval office."

Perhaps worse -- he's not even right on the facts, and he knows it. Like Representatives Boehner and Cantor, President Bush just makes up policies to attack. Barack Obama opposes negotiating with terrorists. And always has. This is just another example of the disingenuous habit of this administration to create "some people" whom they can argue against, strawman arguments that they can use in their disgusting political attacks.

No -- Barack Obama believes our government should engage the full range of diplomatic tools with other states in the region - from Syria to Iran to Pakistan - to further our foreign policy interests and fight against terrorism.

Here's Barack Obama's response pointing this out:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

And if the Administration has a problem with people who want to engage with countries he has avoided, he should come home and start demanding resignations from his Cabinet. Just yesterday, his Secretary of Defense told the Washington Post,

We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with ," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.

I also find it enormously disrespectful of Israel for President Bush to use the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the nation of Israel to launch such a divisive and mendacious attack, even using a disgusting and misleading reference to the Nazis in front of the Israeli government.

Throwing in the "Nazi appeaser" rhetoric is an old Republican trick, too. I remember saying way back in 2006 in a speech at Faneuil Hall that, "It is deeply immoral to compare a majority of Americans who oppose a failing policy and seek a winning one to appeasers of Fascism and Naziism." I was then responding to Rumsfeld; he's gone but his legacy endures.

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edited title for clarification

[Supersedeas]

1. it is time to take off the gloves

[politicasista]

2. K&R

:kick:

[beachmom]

3. Kerry (and Biden) has been really out front on this.

Bush is indeed a uniter -- of the Dem party.

[Unbowed]

4. Too bad we can't lock Kerry and Biden in a room with Shrub and Cheney.

(After January, of course.)

I think we would see some serious ass-kicking on the part of our gentlemanly Dems. Statesmen yes, but I wouldn't want to have either of these guys pissed at me.