Appeasement: Reagan did it well with enthusiasm
John McCain, while attacking Barack Obama, said this:
"I believe that it's not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn't sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.''Looks like McCain has forgotten a little thing called Iran-Contra. The hostages came home because Reagan provided weapons to Iran in exchange for them.
Now that's appeasement.
ps - fev at headsup points out something in that International Herald Tribune story I didn't mention here - the way reporters Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Elisabeth Bumiller and Brian Knowlton actually call out the hidden premise in this:
Bush then made a surprising segue, adding: "Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away." He did not say who those people were.Check out fev's analysis of it, it's fascinating.
2 Comments:
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At 3:22 PM, May 17, 2008
fev had this to say...
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At 4:24 PM, May 17, 2008
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Well ... in fairness to McCain, he's talking about the release of the embassy captives in Iran, right? Who were let go right after Reagan's inauguration?
I would take issue with your hed, though. If I recall, the result was a fairly low net hostage-to-missile ratio and a fairly high amount of international embarrassment. And the collective snuggle-up to Baghdad that went on during the Iran-Iraq war certainly didn't prevent the invasion of Kuwait (or the attack on the Stark, for that matter).
It's probably fair to say that Reagan engaged in appeasement enthusiastically -- just not that he did it very well.
See, fev? Never say I can't be edited!
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