The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

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Let’s just hold on half-a-mo before we get our panties in a bunch over President Pickledick’s Nazi appeasement shtick. After all, politicians since the 1930s have trotted out the same lame line over and over to not much success. This fidelity to stupid ideas proves politicians aren’t exactly the quickest learners on the planet (which, by the way, paper-waving Neville Chamberlain demonstrated in spades).

Incurious George may have chosen a wildly inappropriate venue for his smear and his propensity for such shenanigans is well-known. However, seriously charging most modern politicians of appeasement is clearly a Close Encounter of the Hyperbolic Kind that lessens the impact of the truly barbaric things Nazis did in real life. But the sad truth is that both sides are equally guilty of similar hyperbole and both sides are equally indignant when it happens. That’s not to say the charge is OK or that the utterance wasn’t clearly a big, fresh steak thrown to the Israelis and the more rabid members of Carniveorge’s party. The fishing-with-dynamite tinge of the story is both wrong and stupid, but also nothing to get all riled up about. Bullies only attack when they get a rise out of the victim - and George is a bully if he’s nothing else

The Bushies did their ever-dependable poor job with their homework before heaving this stinking turd of a charge on the world stage. The administration has already talked to terrorists - sometimes successfully. One of the few bright spots in Bush’s piss-poor foreign relations policy resulted in Libya’s Khadafi kicking his terrorist lifestyle to the curb. Bush and the Pootiehead Cabal already talks freely with several state sponsors of terrorism - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and arguably Israel come to mind. His own Secretary of State and several of the top generals he famously devotes rapt attention to have repeatedly counseled him to talk to these rogue regimes.

Like most snark-ass charges, appeasement holds a small grain of truth and a lot of Stretch Armstronginess. Talking with the most belligerent of these unsavory types isn’t likely to result in a large or sustained change in their behavior, but he’s also demonstrated that whacking Iran, et al with his corked Louisville Slugger isn’t working out so great either.

It boils down to this: if you’re talking, you’re not fighting. This tactic is called containment - something wholly different than appeasement. Containment uses talk, coupled with incentives or sometimes downright sabre-rattling, to lead a recalcitrant asshat to the table. Appeasement is talking incessantly and never backing up tough words with action. Even St. Ronnie of Reagan used containment as a very successful tool. Pulling on the ‘ol presidential Tony Lama’s and kicking the shit out of an Iranian crackpot who only has marginal sway over his own country doesn’t solve a thing.

So remember, George’s half-baked appeasement charge isn’t even worth dignifying with a response. The best course of action is not to appease him, but to ignore him like a blood-sucking mosquito biting the ass of an elephant. We already have him more or less contained, ignore him so he doesn’t get the bullyish emotional goose for which he pushes so hard. Just repeat, “I’m paper and you’re glue. Whatever bounces off me sticks to you.”

That’s probably the most mature thing any of us can say.

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The Poobah is a featured contributor at Bring It On!

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