Today, Bush had this to say to the Israeli Parliament:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

I love this quote. I think it crystalizes why Bush’s policies have been so wrong and have cost us so much.

Let’s take the first sentence – Bush characterizes the act of talking with these groups as something akin to selling a car; that what we would be doing, the only thing we could do in a discussion, is try to persuade the group that they are wrong.

If this is the view that Bush has held for the last eight years, it goes a long way to explaining why he has failed us so miserably. It seems he doesn’t consider the possibility of understanding another point of view. His view seems to be elitist, condescending – that we need explain to our adversaries why they are wrong in their beliefs. Anyone with a spit of brains could tell you that’s a futile tack, and Bush having just that much brainpower figured it out lickity-split. That path can only lead to war – there’s no diplomacy there. There’s no respect on a human level. It’s simply that I’m right and you’re wrong. Kid’s stuff.

Now the second sentence – comparing a discussion with these groups to persuading Hitler to stop his reign of terror. Maybe I’ve got my history all mixed up, but wasn’t Hitler sorta kinda have a world conquest-type agenda? Whereas the terrorist organizations we’re so worried about are generally trying to get people out of their own patch of land. Right? Am I off base here?

I’m not envisioning a future love-in with Bin Laden, but there are pretty clear cut reasons why there is an Al Qaeda – we knew it back when we walked away from Afghanistan.

Terrorism is becoming war-resistant – the more fighting there is, the stronger it gets. As a nation, it seems like we aren’t leveraging our strength at all – we’re just throwing wild punches and hoping some of ‘em land. In the process, our one-time allies back away and going “Dude, America, chill, yo.”
But chill we don’t.

And chill we must.

Providing the Dems don’t blow it big time in November (as they have since they were elected to Congress… yeesh, it’s been an embarassing ride), chill we just might.

Obama ’08.