Bush stirs up U.S. campaign with 'appeasement' remark

Enlarge Photo U.S. President George W. Bush speaks during the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem May 14,...

Thu, May 15 11:29 PM

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush stirred up the campaign to replace him, suggesting on Thursday that Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's pledge to talk to Iran's leader amounted to "the false comfort of appeasement."

"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 during a visit to Israel to mark its 60th anniversary.

Without mentioning Obama by name, he compared "this foolish delusion" to the prelude to World War Two.

"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," he said.

The United States entered World War Two more than two years after the German invasion of Poland when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941.

Bush, who has generally avoided talking about the campaign to elect a new president in November, drew a sharp response from Obama, the Illinois senator who is close to defeating rival Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama maintains he would be willing to meet with leaders of hostile nations like Iran, Syria and Cuba. He argues the United States blundered by refusing to talk to them.

'FALSE ATTACK'

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack," Obama said.

"George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel," he said.

Republican John McCain, who has clinched his party's presidential nomination, did not repeat the word "appeasement" when asked about Bush's comments as he campaigned in Ohio.

But he did criticize Obama's pledge to speak directly to U.S. foes, particularly Iran.

"It is a serious error on the part of Sen. Obama. It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says that Israel is a 'stinking corpse' that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel. My question is, what does he want to talk about?" McCain said.

Both Bush and McCain frequently criticize Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel and believe he must be stopped from developing a nuclear weapon, a goal Iran denies.

White House spokesman Dana Perino insisted Bush did not specifically mean to target Obama, saying "there are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that President Bush thinks we should not talk to."

A prominent McCain backer, Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate, said Bush "got it exactly right" by rejecting the idea that "if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers they would cease to threaten us."

But House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Bush's remarks were "beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel."

"I would hope that any serious person would disassociate himself from the president's remarks who aspires to leadership in our country," she said.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan and Jeff Mason)

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