A country talking to its enemies is not appeasement

"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side." Orson Scott Card

President Bush has accused people who will not support his violence and aggression against other countries as appeasers, comparing them to those in the 1930s who negotiated with Adolph Hitler. I imagine President Bush would like for his enemies to appease him.

President Bush gave a speech in Israel, on Israel's 60th anniversary. President Bush said: "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. 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."

President Bush said in his speech that critics' calls for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two. Yet, despite President Bush's admonition, the Bush administration has been in diplomatic talks with Iran! I think President Bush is being somewhat haughty. He simply does not deign to meet certain leaders he dislikes.


What does it say if we negotiate with our enemies and get what we want, or 75% of what we want, without war; death, debt, and destruction? Does negotiating with your enemy and winning in the negotiations mean you have appeased your enemy? Of course not. Spouses are always negotiating. Some are appeasers. Business and labor negotiate without appeasing. We all negotiate in our daily lives. Talking with our opponents does not mean we are appeasing each other.

Egos and hubris should never prevent negotiations between countries with armies capable of killing millions. During WW I, ten million people were killed, all because of poor negotiators. Countries should never abandon the negotiating table. As long as they are talking, men are not dying. Inflated egos can cause a catastrophe.

All negotiations between countries should be on the record and made public so the citizens could know when their governments are lying.

President Bush does not have time to do all the negotiations, and diplomacy is a delicate art. The trouble is, there are too many foreign policy decisions that make so much diplomacy necessary. President Bush just declared HIS vision for the Middle East! He has no right to impose his vision on other countries. If he would stick to protecting the United States instead of fighting Israel's wars, then we would not be talking about meeting with our enemies, because we would not have as many enemies.

"Talking" with "terrorists" will not lead to submission or appeasement. Our own police "talk" to serial killers and criminals all the time in order to get what the police want. This is not appeasement.

The definition of 'Appease'- To pacify or attempt to pacify (an enemy) by granting concessions, often at the expense of principle.

Discussions with your enemy is not appeasement. Semantics, prevarication, and subdolous rhetoric are however, part of politics.

The essay below by Auberon Herbert describes a terrorist as simply wanting to share in the power of government. All relationships are about power and self interest. President Bush, put aside your ego and start talking to our enemies. You just might save millions of lives.

Charles Tolleson

From -Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) [1885] Essay Five, The Ethics of Dynamite.

"With a hideous leer upon his face, he turned to the governments and said: You govern, you do what you choose, you take possession of body and mind, you wring from this subject human material all that you imagine that you want for your own purposes, you send men hither and thither to be shot for the quarrels that it amuses you to make, you burden them with all the restrictions and vexations that in your belief can add some little thing to your own security or convenience or dignity, and you do it just because you are strong enough to do it-because you have discovered and perfected the trick of the majority. You say that you have a majority on your side-that this majority is strong enough to inflict its will upon all others. Let it be so; I make no pretense to possess a majority; a minority is good enough for me-a small minority of desperate reckless men, believing in their ideas, and not caring much for their lives. But such as we are, we, too, have power.It is not like your power, disguised under innumerable forms and ceremonies; it is just what it professes to be-power, brutal, naked,and not ashamed. Come now, let us reason for a moment together. Where, after all, is the difference between us? We both of us are believers in power; we both of us desire to fashion the world to our own liking by means of power. The only difference between us is in the form of the power which we each make use of. Your power depends upon clever electioneering devices, upon tricks of oratory, upon organized wealth and numbers; mine is the power that can be carried in the pocket of any ragged coat, if the owner of the ragged coat is sufficiently endowed with courage and ideas. We are both seeking to govern. Why, then, do you turn your faces from me, flout me, and disown me? I am your brother, younger, it is true, than you, a little down in the world and disreputable perhaps, but for all that, child of the same family, equal in rank, and claiming by the same title deeds as yourselves. True, I am not magnificently equipped as you are; I have no court as you have, no army, no public institutions, no national treasury, no titles, no uniforms resplendent with decorations; I have only a few fanatical followers; and yet, perhaps, as regards the truetest of power, I can command the fears of men and possess myself of their obedience quite as effectually as you can. Let us greet each other and shake hands, even if we are opposed. Believe me, though you shrink from recognizing me, I am in very deed your own brother, your coequal, flesh of your flesh, and spirit of your spirit. Henceforth from today we divide the government of the world between us. You are the force of the majority; and I am the force of the minority."