QOTD: Victor Davis Hansen

Is merely talking with our enemies appeasement? Not necessarily, but we need a good definition of appeasement to avoid it. My emphasis below.

Most define appeasement not by the mere willingness on occasion to negotiate with enemies (i.e., the heads of nation states rather than criminal terrorist cliques). Rather, appeasement is an overriding desire to avoid war or confrontation to such a degree so as to engage in a serial pattern of behavior that results in an accommodation of an enemy's demands — and ultimately the inadvertent enhancement of its agendas...

Talking with an Iranian theocrat like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad per se might not necessarily constitute appeasement. But continuing such talks without preconditions that made no progress in curbing Iranian nuclear agendas, or support for Hezbollah terrorists and Shiite militias in Iraq would not only be futile, but encourage further Iranian adventurism — by the assurance that negotiations were infinite and there would be few lines in the sand and little chance of military opposition to follow...

Bush in his Knesset address may have acknowledged that expansive notion of appeasement when he elaborated on his "negotiate with terrorists and radicals" line, with the proviso of futility — namely that such talking assumed an "ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." In addition, Bush's example — that when "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' — suggests that his reference to appeasement meant not just one-time talking, but delusional and persistent engagement that is oblivious to facts on the ground.