Thursday, May 15, 2008

Bush continues to lie about Obama's positions

Bush has previously smeared Obama with outright falsehoods relating to foreign policy, characterizing his desire to negotiate with America's enemies and potentially conduct strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan as wanting to "embrace Ahmadinejad" and "attack Pakistan".

Now, the asshole is at it again:

"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," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem. "We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the 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."


Of course, Obama has never said ANYTHING about negotiating with terrorists. And notice the obligatory reference to "appeasement" and the Nazis, as if every potential conflict is WWII all over again.

It's a standard talking point among neo-cons that Iran is the next Nazi Germany and Ahmadinejad the next Hitler, but this only makes sense if you ignore absolutely all the facts. Iran is a poor, third-world country with minimal industrial capacity and minimal military power. It can project some degree of force outside of its borders with the help of its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its militia allies inside Iraq, and it does have some leverage over the world supply of oil, but comparing it to Nazi Germany, a true superpower in every sense of the word, is absurd.

Also notice that Bush conflates the internationally recognized government of Iran with "terrorists and radicals". Naturally, if you start from that point, diplomacy becomes impossible. The US does not even recognize the legitimacy of the Iranian government, so on what basis can the United States negotiate with Iran? Only through third parties and the rattling of sabers.

Also from the article:

The remarks seemed to be a not-so-subtle attempt to continue to raise doubts about Obama with Jewish Americans. Those doubts were earlier stoked by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2008 presidential election, when he recently charged that Obama is the favored candidate of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist group.


There has been a concerted effort among the right in recent weeks to try and scare Jewish American voters away from Obama. Except it has failed miserably. Recent polls show Obama holds an overwhelming lead among American Jews, proving that the Right certainly does not speak for them in any way, despite their pretensions of doing so.

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