Boneheaded Bush trips over Bill Borah's ghost

George Bush, speaking today in Israel (from a report on the Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog):

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,'' Bush said in an address to the Knesset today which drew repeated standing ovations for his commitment to stand by Israel against all enemies.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of 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.''

The "American senator" whom Bush quoted was William Borah, Republican of Idaho.

Joe Biden responds:

This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement.

George Bush couldn't lick William Borah's boots. Shame on him for trying to use Borah's genuine anti-imperialist impulses in the service of the current administration's utterly incomprehensible policy in the Middle East and its failed strategies to defeat terrorism.

Comments

[Sisyphus]

Good on ya blogma. More to come.

[W. Lane Startin]

Borah was a fine example of a now-extinct species known as the progressive Republican. His isolationist streak was legendary, especially after he pretty much killed American involvement in the League of Nations almost singlehandedly.

I'm not an isolationist by any means, but his leadership certainly would be useful today.