Negotiation VS Appeasement

By Ron Beasley

When George W. Bush accused Barack Obama of being an appeaser  because he is willing to negotiate with enemies, alleged and real, he gave us an opportunity so see into the soul of the neocons and corporatists who have been in complete control of this country for the last seven and a half years.  Although I don't like to break things down to black VS white in this case it's appropriate - if you oppose negotiation you are in favor of perpetual war. Remember John McCain promised that there would be many more wars.  In an LA Times op-ed Peter Scoblic explains the historical fantasy of negotiation = appeasement argument.

In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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."

But 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.

The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. The logic went something like this: Because communism was evil, the United States should seek to destroy it, not coexist with it; the bipartisan policy of containment, which sought to prevent the further spread of communism, was a moral and strategic folly because it implied long-term coexistence with Moscow. Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment -- which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union -- constituted "appeasement."

Instead, conservatives agitated for the rollback of communism, and they opposed all negotiations with the Soviets. When Eisenhower welcomed Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to the United States in 1959, William F. Buckley Jr., the right's leader, complained that the act of "diplomatic sentimentality" signaled the "death rattle of the West."

I think it is necessary to look at what motivates the people that say this.  There are some who may actually believe it - a minority I would guess.  There are some who simply mimic the talking points.  But what about the rest?

We were warned about the rest by a Republican and retired general, Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence � economic, political, even spiritual � is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Since 1961 very little and at the same time a great deal has changed.  The most dangerous change has been the Industrial part of the equation.  It is even bigger and more powerful and now controls the media and as we saw in the lead up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq is often little more than a government propaganda source not unlike Pravda in the old Soviet Union.  The television journalists have been replaced by millionaire celebrity talking heads who's major concern is the welfare of their corporate employers and their own six and seven figure salaries.  They are cheerleaders for war because there is nothing like a war to increase viewer ship and at the same time increase the profits of the corporate parents.  Negotiation is bad because perpetual war is profitable.