Obama An Appeaser? How Dare You

by Mark Steyn - May 17th, 2008 - Orange County Register

"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."

That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.

President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies.

The 1930s-era senator whom Bush quoted in his speech as saying, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided," was Sen. William Borah -- a Republican. If Bush is ridiculing a Republican for being an appeaser, why are Democrats so defensive?

"Now, that's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world," Obama said.

"And that's why we need change in Washington. That's part of the reason why I'm running for president of the United States of America." What reason is that Barack, so we can be proud of appeaasers?

"I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days."

Divisive? I will tell you who is being divisive. The LIAR Barack Obama. George Bush never attacked him. Obama's claim that he did is the lie. Obama went on to say, "They aren't telling you the truth. They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it's not going to work. Not this time, not this year."

I keep saying that Barack Obama is a socialist, and certainly with this attack he is practicing the standard socialist technique of telling the BIG LIE. It has already been accepted as "truth" by the MSM that Bush attacked Obama. It is obvious that Obama and his campaign are trying to get the discussion about why we are at war behind them early in the campaign. That way they can campaign on their strengths towards the end. They were successful in diverting the discussion from Obama's lies about what Bush said to the discussion of appeasement and Obama's insistence that he is not an appeaser. Obama made a lot of progress in confusing the issue and defusing it. If this campaign goes like this we will shortly have our second socialist President. I predict that the economic consequences of Obama will be as severe as the consequences of the first socialist President, Carter.