Posted on 07/12/2004 7:39:19 AM PDT by Tennessean4Bush
Appeasement
by Michael Barone
There are two approaches to terrorists. One is to fight them with every weapon you can -- the military, intelligence services, interdiction of money flows, diplomacy. That is what George W. Bush is doing against the Islamist terrorists who struck Sept. 11. The other way is appeasement. Give the terrorists some of what they want, and hope that they will stop being terrorists any more. That was the approach Bill Clinton took in the 1990s to terrorists in Colombia, Israel and Northern Ireland.
We are often told these days that Bush's fight against terrorism is not going well. So perhaps it's worth looking at how well the other approach to terrorism worked.
Colombia: Clinton supported former Colombian President Andres Pastrana's policy of officially ceding control of a large swathe of territory to the FARC, the 17,000-member guerrilla group that claims to fight for Marxism and is guilty of kidnapping, murder and drug trafficking on a wide scale. But recognition of the FARC did not reduce its criminal activities.
Before the end of his term in 2002, Pastrana reversed his policy. To succeed him, voters chose Alvaro Uribe, who pledged to hunt the terrorists down.
"So far the results are impressive," writes scholar Mark Falcoff of the American Enterprise Institute. "Killings and kidnappings are down, some highways have reopened and a few high-ranking guerrilla leaders have been captured." Uribe's job approval is sky high. The bottom line: Appeasement failed.
Israel. In 1993, Israel accepted the Oslo Accords and entered into negotiations to give up land to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority. In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the most generous offer ever: more than 97 percent of the occupied territories. Despite Bill Clinton's negotiating skills and flattery (he was invited to the White House more often than any other foreign leader), Arafat turned down the offer and began the Intifada, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis by suicide bombs. Barak was swept from office.
George W. Bush has backed Ariel Sharon's refusal to deal with Arafat and his fence separating Israelis and Palestinians. Most Israelis support the fence, and suicide bombings are way down. The bottom line: Appeasement failed.
Northern Ireland: Here, the indispensable guide is Dean Godson, chief editorial writer of the Daily Telegraph of London, and his recently published "Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism." Trimble is the leader of the moderate unionist party (unionists want to keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom), who negotiated the 1998 Easter Sunday agreement with republican John Hume and with Bill Clinton and the British and Irish prime ministers. Trimble and Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The basic bargain was simple: The unionists would let the republicans have places in the Northern Ireland government, and the republican paramilitaries would give up their arms. The unionists kept their side of the bargain, but the paramilitaries have not, and have been setting further concessions. Tony Blair has suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly and Trimble's party lost seats to the anti-agreement unionists led by Ian Paisley. The bottom line: Appeasement is failing.
All of which is relevant to this year's presidential election. John Kerry has said that the war against terrorism is primarily a matter for law enforcement and intelligence. He recently ran an ad based on a book he wrote in 1997. But that book never mentioned Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden -- it was primarily about the danger of international organized crime.
And terrorists do turn to crime: The FARC finances its activities by drug trafficking, and one reason the paramilitaries won't give up their arms is that they make money by smuggling and drug trafficking, too.
It's impossible to know exactly what Kerry would do as president or what Bush would do in a second term. But Kerry seems far more inclined toward appeasement, as Clinton was.
Richard Holbrooke, who would like to be Kerry's secretary of state, notes that Clinton was cheered in Ireland for his "peace process," while Bush was greeted with angry demonstrations there. But the British cheered Neville Chamberlain when he returned from Munich with "peace in our time" in 1938. A year later, they thought very differently.
In the short run, appeasement seems the more conciliatory, thoughtful, nuanced way to deal with terrorists. But in the long run, it tends not to work.
Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.
©2004 Creators Syndicate
This is Barone at his best. Sorry if this is already been posted. Did a couple of searches and did not find it.
Yet they keep on trotting out the same old canard...
and people keep falling for it.
Kerry would never call what he wants to do appeasement. Chamberlain probably never called his agreement with Hitler "appeasement" either. Of course, in Chamberlain's case history made the judgement. It is left to the American people to decide whether in Kerry's case his idea amounts to appeasement.
He leaves out isolationism.
Don't let any foreigners in. Guard your borders with a strong military. Let people living in foreign countries defend themselves and solve their own problems.
I don't think it's feasible nowadays, since we want to meddle in everyone's business and tell everyone how they ought to live, but it's the way things used to be.
So, is that the approach America should have taken in 1941?
Or, should we merely have attacked Japan and left Europe to fight Hitler?
I am sure that pResident kerry will call for a group hug to make everything OK.
Bump for morning break.
Flash traffic--cubicle bound--Analysis of President's speech appreciated--confidence is high--repeat--confidence is high
Sometimes I wonder about that.
By rescuing Europe from Hitler, and then guarding them from Soviet aggression for forty years, we seem to have created a continent of spoiled socialists who rely on us for defense while criticizing everything we do.
Hitler made a similar mistake, declaring war on the US when we declared war on Japan. He could have told the Japanese too bad, I've got enough problems, but he honored his treaty with them. You can see where it got him.
If we had only fought the Japanese, the Soviets probably would have beaten Hitler and swept right through Europe. Then Stalin, and not us, would have been stuck with them.
I am not necessarily advocating any of this, but it could have happened that way, and now we'd be facing a different set of problems.
"I don't think it's feasible nowadays, since we want to meddle in everyone's business and tell everyone how they ought to live, but it's the way things used to be."
WE'RE telling everybody how to live???? Come on! Sadaam wasn't, Osama isn't, the terrorist aren't, no dictator is telling everyone how to live. Just us. That's very interesting. How come they have the right to do that, and we don't? Dictatorship is better than democracy? I'd rather have us (the U.S) telling the world how to live than the Islamic extremists. What about you? What would YOU have??
IN FACT, the UN (United Nations) should be set up so that they would not allow ANY country to be a dictatorship EVER AGAIN. What's wrong with that???
I am most tired of this dance that makes it seem that Democrats and other socialist are of just a different opinion about how to defeat terrorist. It is the greatest lie of this era.
Democrats and other socialist don't want to defeat terrorist. They want to enable them - to make sure they have more terrorism foisted upon the good people of earth. Terrorism aids and helps the socialist agenda. It is time this lie is brought into the light.
Since this lie remains in the dark, it must be assumed there is something dark about the goals of the democrats and other socialist. If their dream for the rest of us is so grand, why must it be achieved by such means? We should be rushing to embrace their ideas - ideas who's true goal should not be hidden - but paraded out and trumped to the masses. But instead we have a pyre of lies and pretend it's just a difference of opinion. I'm sick of it.
The democrats and their ungodly alliance with whatever-forces that will defeat the United States of America and bring the downfall of anything and everything that destroys the USA is the truth. They love TERRORISM. The democrats wish they had invented it.
This article is a bit too black and white.
If u look at the anti partisan operations carried out by the Germans where they used all the ruthless methods known to man they just helped to recruit more partisans.
The soviets carried out anti Insurgency ops throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, 80s well into the 21st century against various ethnic groups who resented Russian. Soviet Dominance, partly the reason the Soviet Union collapsed. If you use purely military tactics to defeat an Insurgency you will defeat that rising or group but then you will be fighting the same war again in the next 10 20 30 years. If the local populace do have legitimate grievances as was the situation in North Ireland dealing with those grievances is not appeasement. Tony
Absolutely brilliant article.
The islamists declared war on us, over and over.
The Democrats are sending us an Anti-War peace activist during a time of war. Socialists, Communists, folks in France and the Terrorists are thrilled. Perhaps we should send the democrats a message this November.
Here here! I cannot believe pundits actually take the Kerry-Edwards ticket seriously. It's a joke and dangerous in a time of war.
Hate to break the news to the author, but appeasing is also just what Bush has been doing with regard to the terrorists in Israel. The most recent example is his refusal to go along with moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, Israel's chosen capital. And many people on this board have been defending him for it, precisely because it would "inflame" the terrorists against us.
Totally agree. The left is the enemy, not just another opinion. The media dogs and edoocaters have such a grip on the ignorant and the young, it's positively scary.
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