If It's "Appeasement" To Talk With Iran, What Is It Called When Bush Sucks Up to Saudi Arabia?

Am I the only one who thinks this is great irony?

On Thursday, President Bush was in Israel addressing the Knesset on the occasion of Israel's 60th Birthday. Was this the time or the place for the President to compare Barack Obama and the Democrats to those who appeased the Nazis before World War II because they want to have discussions with the government of Iran, Hamas, and other democratically elected leaders in the Middle East?

(Note: The New York Times editorial staff must have read my blog because it later came out with this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/opinion/17sat2.html?th&emc=th

Apart from Bush's timing and choice of location, I find it fascinating that he would equate the willingness to talk with appeasement. I have read a lot of history and I have never heard Neville Chamberlain criticized by anyone for TALKING with Hitler during the late 1930s. All the criticism was for what Chamberlain and others DID after talking with Hitler.

This is a perfect example of how the water carriers of the Right have tried to eliminate rational discourse from our public conversation by coining buzzwords like "appeaser" or "cut and run" and slapping those who disagree with them with perjorative labels. Check out this segment of Chris Matthews' Hardball from May 15 where a spokeperson of the Right shows his true colors and true ignorance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK0d8ENS__c

Ironically, even as Bush spoke in Israel, high ranking members of his administration were engaging in discussions with the leaders of Iran--that according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice who have said for months now that such talks were useful and necessary.

But it gets better--or worse, depending on your perspective.

The very next day (actually today), Bush moved on to Saudi Arabia to beg his good friends and our close national allies in the Saudi royal family to pump more oil so Americans can keep driving as much but pay a little less.

This gives me yet another chance to wonder out loud why Saudi Arabia is considered our ally. Virtually all of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were Saudi All the money that funded the attack was Saudi. The education system that taught them and most others in the Middle East to hate America and want to destroy us was developed in Saudi Arabia and to this day exists there and is funded elsewhere by the Saudis. In addition, a recent government study showed that most of the money that funds terror in the world today comes from Saudi Arabia.

So why then is sucking up to the Saudis--who attacked us on 9/11 and fund most of the terrorism in the world--and begging them for oil considered "diplomacy" while suggesting that we talk to Iran whose terrorist credentials are far inferior is called "appeasement?"

This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know.

In an ironic and pathetic postscript, the Saudis greeted Bush warmly, treated him like royalty, and then told him perform a physically impossible act and not to let the door hit him in the ass on his way back to Air Force One. They told us we will get whatever oil they give us and we'll like it.

Maybe I should have gone to graduate school. Then I might understand these things better.