Patrick McIlheran on the manufactured outrage from the Obama camp over President Bush's comments on appeasement.

Obama got his bowels in a twist, apparently, because President Bush gave a speech in Jerusalem saying exactly this:

"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. 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."

In short, the pretty much normal understanding that you bargain only if there's something to bargain about. As John Podhoretz points out, this is almost boilerplate. The view has bipartisan buy-in, as you'd expect, other than among those particular Democrats who lately have made a point of snuggling up to thugs and so on. As Paul Mirengoff at Power Line points out:

"What's telling here is Obama's defensiveness. Bush didn't say that Obama is among those who favor negotiating with Hamas, for example. But it's understandable that this is a sore point for Obama, inasmuch as his former adviser, Robert Malley, not only favors negotiating with Hamas but apparently was actually 'negotiating' with it."