The Man From Munich, Ever Alive in American Politics
A 20th century pejorative worked its way into 21st century politics last week. Appeasement as an attack phrase was back in vogue.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked the term in speeches to veterans, a not-so-subliminal effort to liken critics of President Bush’s Iraq policy to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who disastrously tried to reason with Hitler in Munich in 1938.
In Mr. Rumsfeld’s words, Mr. Bush’s critics had not “learned history’s lessons.” Can Americans, he asked, “truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”
The response from Democrats was swift.
“It’s a calculated political argument to throw people off the real facts, which is a military that’s stretched to the breaking point, a strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan that doesn’t seem to be working well,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, told reporters. “It’s selective history of the worst kind.”
But if it seemed that Republicans had hit on a new campaign theme, not much was new about it. Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have invoked Munich for political effect, even as some of them fretted over being branded Chamberlains themselves.
Read entire article at NYT
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked the term in speeches to veterans, a not-so-subliminal effort to liken critics of President Bush’s Iraq policy to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who disastrously tried to reason with Hitler in Munich in 1938.
In Mr. Rumsfeld’s words, Mr. Bush’s critics had not “learned history’s lessons.” Can Americans, he asked, “truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”
The response from Democrats was swift.
“It’s a calculated political argument to throw people off the real facts, which is a military that’s stretched to the breaking point, a strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan that doesn’t seem to be working well,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, told reporters. “It’s selective history of the worst kind.”
But if it seemed that Republicans had hit on a new campaign theme, not much was new about it. Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have invoked Munich for political effect, even as some of them fretted over being branded Chamberlains themselves.