Press Action ::: Appeasement: We Follow Orders, Why Don't You?

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Appeasement: We Follow Orders, Why Don't You?

By Micah Holmquist

Voters in Spain elected the Socialist Party on Sunday.

This surprise outcome was, in the words of a Washington Post story by Keith B. Richburg, “apparently” the result of voters “blaming” Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s “staunch support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq for the bombings that killed 200 people in Madrid on Thursday.”

Unlike in the United States where arguably most of the opposition to invading and occupying Iraq has coalesced around a presidential candidate who authorized the invasion and is committed to continuing the occupation, Spain’s Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says he will remove Spanish troops from Iraq.

Predictably supporters of U.S. President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” have howled in disapproval . Before these election results, hawks were assuming Spain would act just like the United States did in response to events of September 11, 2001 — complete with a cool name, “311," that references the defining moment of history — but no more. Spain is now guilty of “appeasement.”

“[I]t seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice between Bush and al Qaeda. Al Qaeda won,” says Andrew Sullivan to the roughly 50,000 people who read his blog.

“The appeasers win an election,” David Horowitz of frontpagemag.com writes.

Appeasement, Merriam-Webster says, means “to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles.” That said, this definition is hardly relevant to the above statements where the term has come to ostensibly mean doing anything that might, either directly or indirectly, correspond with what al Qaeda or “the terrorists" want. While it of course makes no sense to do something just because it is what al Qaeda or any other group or individual wants, refusing to do something because it is what al Qaeda desires is every bit as much of a prison. This allows a group or individual to directly determine what you cannot do and thus, for all intents and purposes, what you can do.

Nobody really takes it that far, however. Such is the only conclusion one can reach after looking at the lack of outrage from the usual suspects over the planned pull-out of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia. The presence of these troops in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden’s grievances against the United States — perhaps the one that provides real motivation — so how could pulling troops out be anything other than “appeasement”? The answer is that “appeasement” is, in the hawkish parlance of this day, nothing more than an epithet to be used against actions or policies that are disliked. Hence, in a mensnewsdaily.com column, Barbara J. Stock can say Spain is responsible for future terrorist attacks because of that country’s “appeasement” (the disliked set of policies and positions) without mentioning or even considering that the United States was to blame for last week’s bombing in Spain due to its “appeasement.” Similarly, U.S. military aid to the government of Egypt, which treats gay men in a manner that al Qaeda would surely approve of, is not “appeasement” because most of these jingos, to use another epithet, don’t care about this one way or another because it has not been raised as an issue.

Along the same lines, nobody accuses the United States of appeasing Iran in 1980 by electing Ronald Reagan. Nonetheless it is obvious that the Iranian Revolution was really an attempt on the part of Ayatollah Khomeini to register disapproval of the Jimmy Carter Administration. When that didn’t work, Khomeini attempted to make Carter look weak via the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the public took the bait, electing Reagan and appeasing our enemies in Iran. Just think of the evil that could have been prevented if Carter had been reelected. Iraq may have been able to defeat Iran more decisively, the Contras might not have had to sell drugs and it is even possible that the Soviet Union wouldn’t have hung around for more than an additional decade.

The above paragraph is obviously absurd, but no more so than many of the statements that are being made about “appeasement.” I suspect the only reason the idea that Reagan’s election equaled appeasement isn’t touted countlessly by every person who knows that Franco was once in charge of Spain is that, for obvious reasons, it doesn’t serve to support any goal of the Bush Administration. Team Bush’s friends in the media have therefore not repeated it without end.

The real aim is to create a binary division, such as this one from the blogger know as “DANEgerus,” that makes all political options that do not involve the continuation of the “war on terror” unacceptable. Moreover, because there are only two options, the “war on terror” or appeasement, the Bush Administration is given a blank check to do what it wants. If they say Iran or Syria is a deadly and immediate threat that must be dealt with posthaste, then it must be the case and opposition to bombing, invading or whatever is the Bush Administration’s policy prescription amounts to “appeasement.” Don’t worry about democracy or keeping government accountable. There is only absolute good and absolute evil, and we’ll tell you who’s who. So just do what you are told and be glad custom prevents us from killing you when we want to kill you.

If this seems a bit far-fetched or conspiratorial, consider this graf from a Reuters story on comments from the prime minister of Poland:

"Revising our positions on Iraq after terrorists attacks would be to admit that terrorists are stronger and that they are right (to pursue attacks),” Prime Minister Leszek Miller told a news conference in the Polish town of Tarnow.

It would be simpler to say, “Support the war or line up with the terrorists.”

Micah Holmquist, editor of Irregular Thoughts and Links, is a Cadillac, Mich.-based writer.

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