Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement"

Now, because President Bush has a problem with talking to terrorists, the Media have to make Hitler look better in comparison. Interesting that after calling Bush Hitler, now that Bush has compared terrorists to Hitler, they have to soften Hitler's evil so that Bush is worse than Hitler. What a crock!

Ed cetera | Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement" | Seattle Times Newspaper Blog: "Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. But in 1938 people knew a lot less. What Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable as a national claim (though he was making it in a last-minute, unreasonable way.) Germany's claim was that the areas of Europe that spoke German and thought of themselves as German be under German authority. In September 1938 the principal remaining area was the Sudetenland.

So the British and French let him have it. Their thought was: 'Now you have your Greater Germany.' They didn't want a war. They were not superpowers like the United States is now. They remembered the 1914-1918 war and how they almost lost it.

In a few months, in early 1939, Hitler ordered the invasion of what is now the Czech Republic—that is, territory that was"