Somebody's Clueless

Mean Jean Schmidt, via Ann Driscoll at Wulsin for Congress:

Our foreign policy for the last half century has been described by the word appeasement.  It means that we were willing to support a dictator's oppression of his people as long as he did what we needed.  We simply ignored the screams of his victims in exchange for regular trade or some such thing.

First off, that is most certainly not what appeasement means.  We didn’t allow dictator oppression because we were afraid of making trouble.  We allowed it because we just didn’t give a damn.  We didn’t need their business; we wanted it.  And too often, we supported dictators because “the people” didn’t like us.  

Somehow, modern Republicans have gotten the idea that democracy means pro-American; but their predecessors who helped shape that foreign policy certainly did not.  They knew that communism and anti-Americanism were often popular ideas in many parts of the world, and dictators were clearly our preferred choice in these cases.  Sure, we’d like to have a democracy for everyone; but as we’re finding in Iraq, sometimes, a strongman is better.  Just as long as he’s our strongman.  But even now, dopes like Schmidt seem to have forgotten this and insist that democracy is a friend to Republicans.  William F. Buckley must be rolling in his grave.

And that brings us to our next point.  Exactly who was it that helped “appease” these dictators?  Republicans.  This is their deal.  And who opposed that kind of thing?  Who was upset at dictators keeping down popular movements?  Who were the true supporters of democracy?  Liberals, that’s who.  While Republicans were happy as long as the country in question would continue doing business with us and allowed us to exploit their resources; liberals were vigilantly against such practices and believed them to be immoral.  And we still think that.  We’re still against sweatshops.  We’re still against oppressive regimes.  That’s obvious to anyone paying attention.

And for all the talk that Mean Jean gives about ignoring the screams of victims, it’s her party that is to blame for this.  And now we see a simultaneous blast of them attacking us for “supporting America’s enemies,” as well as implying that we’re to blame for the dictators oppressing those enemies.  I suspect that Jean just hasn’t linked these two ideas together yet.

And so while Congresswoman Jean Schmidt goes on to write that it’s our unused omnipotence that has angered so much of the world; it’s obvious from her own essay that the real culprit is greed.  And I’m fairly positive that Republicans don’t have a particularly good policy against that one.