Negotiation or Appeasement?

The air is polluted with accusations of appeasement hurled at those favoring negotiation rather than military strikes. The president's oblique remarks to the Knesset...

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. (Applause.)

...quickly snatched up by Senator McCain and tossed at Barack Obama, who picked it up like a snowball and threw it back, have poisoned the well in the presidential campaign.

Read now what the Israeli's are saying and doing as Tony Karon points out in today's post.

...Elsewhere, Hamas and Israel are negotiating a truce, with Egypt playing the mediating role once adopted by the U.S. in talks between Israel and its neighbors. The Israelis won’t call it a truce, or admit to talking with Hamas — which Bush, in his fantasy world, likens to talking with Hitler, despite the fact that two thirds of Israelis support such talks — but everyone knows that’s what they’re doing. Bush’s posturing is all very well, but Israel needs a truce with Hamas, so in the realm of practical politics, Bush must simply be sympathetically humored, and ignored.
[...]
Israel is also forced to ignore Bush’s adolescent militancy when it comes to Syria. Washington has, under Bush, refused to engage with Damascus, insisting that it be isolated. But despite Bush’s reservations, the Israelis have opened peace talks with Syria, using Turkey to play the mediating role traditionally assumed by the U.S. — but vacated under the Bush Administration.

I report. You decide.