Obama fires first shot in the real election battle.

The Obama camp are taking the fight to McCain after Bush called Obama "an appeaser" and McCain quickly let it be known that he agreed with the thrust of the president's attack.

Obama has alighted on comments which McCain made, in which he implied that he would be willing to deal with Hamas, and is - at last - calling McCain out as the flip-flopper that he is.

The Obama camp is trying to label Mr McCain as this year's "flip-flopper" on foreign policy, citing a 2006 interview on Sky News when he advocated talking to the Palestinian group Hamas. The Democratic front-runner accused Mr Bush and Mr McCain of supporting a "naive and irresponsible" foreign policy, as he sought not only to combat a perceived weakness of his own, but to yoke his prospective opponent to the unpopular incumbent.

I've already linked to this interview but it's worth watching it again and comparing what McCain said then to his attacks on Obama regarding Hamas now.



I've said it before, McCain is a hypocrite of staggering proportions. He is a man who will literally say anything if he thinks it will get him elected.

"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America," Mr Obama said at a rally in South Dakota, "that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place." He accused the Republicans of "fear-mongering" and pointed to the Sky News interview – shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections – to argue that Senator McCain once took a more pragmatic line.

In the interview, conducted by James Rubin, a former spokesman for the State department in Bill Clinton's administration, Senator McCain was asked if US diplomacy in Palestine should change after Hamas took power. "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another," he answered. "I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence ... but it's a new reality in the Middle East."

Mr Obama said this weekend: "He was actually guilty of the exact same thing that he is accusing me of, and in fact was saying maybe we need to deal with Hamas. That's the kind of hypocrisy we've been seeing in our foreign policy."

The Bush administration's line of never negotiating with enemies is an example of both stunning arrogance and stunning stupidity. It has achieved nothing over the past seven years; nothing in regards to Iran, nothing in regards to Cuba, and a humiliating back down regarding North Korea.

It's a stupid policy which demands that opponents announce their defeat - in the case of Iran, stop enriching uranium and then we can talk - before any negotiation can take place. It's the ultimate example of neo-con thinking, the belief that American military power should be used to make all nations do exactly what the US demands of them.

One would have thought that American failure to use it's military superiority to impose it's will on Iraq would have woken these people up to the limitations of this as a viable policy, but it appears not have hit home yet.

Which is why Bush stands up in Israel and talks of "appeasement" and McCain willingly nods in agreement back at home.

After decades of violence peace was only brought to Northern Ireland through negotiation. Iran have shown many times that they are not going to be bullied into giving up their rights under international law.

As Winston Churchill - the man whom Republicans love to flatter themselves that they emulate - once said, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

But the present Republican party are a caricature of conservatism, they are a one trick pony who thinks that strength is all, even when events on the ground are proving the inaccuracy of that belief. They, however, appear to be simply too stupid to learn the lesson.

It is worth remembering that the neo-cons are an extremist wing of the Republican party who attacked Ronald Reagan for daring to negotiate with the Soviet Union.

Newt Gingrich -- who today regularly invokes the "Chamberlain/appeasement" cliche for anyone who does not crave war with Iran -- denounced President Reagan's rapprochement with Gorbachev in 1985 as potentially "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich."

Don Rumsfeld -- who gave a controversial 2006 speech likening war opponents to 1938 appeasers (and used the same 1939 quote as Bush just used from the U.S. Senator who wanted to talk to Hitler) -- has been tossing around the Chamberlain insult in order to promote his pro-war views for almost 30 years. The Associated Press reported on November 26, 1979 on efforts to oppose ratification of the SALT treaty:

"Our nation's situation is more dangerous today than it has been any time since Neville Chamberlain left Munich, setting the stage for World War II," Rumsfeld said at a news conference.

They may now regularly invoke both Reagan and Churchill and imagine that they are wearing both men's mantle's, but this is far from the truth. They actually denounced the actions of Reagan and they reject the lessons which Churchill learned from WWII. They are extremists attempting to pretend that they represent a continuation of the policies of Reagan and Churchill when, in reality, they reject the policies of both of these men.

Both Reagan and Churchill realised that, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." Which is the very policy which Bush and Cheney explicitly reject. As I say, they are the extremists here.

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Tags: Bush, McCain, Obama, appeasement, Iran, Hamas