Dr. J.'s Short Takes: Appeasement, Polygamy, and Let's Be Fair to Bush's Pro-Nazi Ancestors

Bush Accuses Democrats of Appeasement -- and He's Right!

In that famous speech before the Israeli Knesset last week, Bush accused of the Democrats of appeasement. Apparently he did no know the definition of the term and that right-wing Republican radio screamer Kevin James, who was undressed by Chris Matthews on Hardball certainly didn't. Appeasement is not simply negotiating with an enemy. It is negotiating with an enemy or potential enemy and giving away something significant without getting anything of substance in return. So, when Bush hurled the charge at the Democrats, let's say just in Congress, boy was he right: on tax cuts for the rich, on the original authorization for the War on Iraq, on deregulation, on Supreme Court appointments, on energy policy, on continuing funding (by borrowing only) for the war, on the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts, on giving Congress the third-finger salute on so many occasions that even seasoned observers have lost count. Yes, you name it. The Democrats have been up to their necks in appeasement since the beginning of the BushCheney Regime, of the Regime.

On Polygamy

So there's this fun-and-games polygamy ranch in Texas, not even Utah, but Texas! To my knowledge, polygamy is illegal in the U.S., and has been ever since Utah agreed to illegalize it in order to be admitted to the Union in 1890. But the ranch, and apparently also one or more in Arizona and Colorado, has been tolerated for quite some time, by both its neighbors and local "law" enforcement authorities. The Texas one got into trouble because a note, real or forged-by-who-knows-whom, was smuggled out claiming that underage girls were being made pregnant without their consent. So there was this raid see, and 464 or so children were seized from the ranch. Lurid stories of not only under-age pregnancy but also rape, incest, and other kinds of child abuse, have been coming out since the first exposures. Rape, incest, child abuse (to say nothing of polygamy itself)! Oh-my-gosh, all crimes. And all, apparently being ignored by local law enforcement. The men who run the place, and their adult wives, seem to be going about their business-as-usual, except that they don't have the multiple-children-per-family, the only aspect of this case the media seem to be focusing on. Just think folks if these folks were African-Americans in Texas. I really don't think that the top story would be about the children going to foster homes, while the male criminals who created them all, and apparently abused a goodly number of them in one way or another, would be left to go about their business.

On Bush's pro-Nazi Ancestors: Let's Be Fair

Following The New York Times' Frank Rich's brief mention of the pro-Nazi Bush grandfather, Sen. (yes, Senator) Prescott Bush of Connecticut (not Texas, mind you) (NYT, Rich, "McCain Can't Run, But Bush Won't Hide," May 18, 2008, and a lengthy and a series of most informative articles on the same subject on the Huffington Post [May 15-18], esp. the Senator, the Nazi-lover, has gotten a good deal of attention. Now I cannot claim to have read all of the recent articles on the subject. But it seems to me that in focusing on Prescott Bush (who didn't stop trading with the enemy Adolf Hitler until February 1942, yes, Kevin James, that was after the U.S. entered World War II, when FDR personally threatened him with prosecution), another, older Bush relative has been totally ignored. Yes indeed, Prescott became involved personally with the Nazis only in the 1930s. His father-in-law, GW Bush's great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker (now does that name sound familiar?), was an officer of Brown Brothers-Harriman, an investment bank of the time. It began investing with the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, the most prominent early major funder of Hitler, in 1923. And George Herbert Walker was their chief representative in Germany. So let's be fair to Prescott. If his father-in-law did it, did he really have much choice in the matter?

And now coming full circle to appeasement, Bush should know all about it. After all, his direct ancestors were raising money for Hitler when he was negotiating with Neville Chamberlain. And after all, all Chamberlain was really after was an assurance from Hitler that he would go after the Soviet Union (the famous "Drang Nach Osten" Drive to the East), which Chamberlain hated about as much as Hitler did, without at the same time threatening the existence of the British Empire. So he let Hitler remilitarize the Rhineland (1936), take over Austria (1938), capture Czechoslovakia without a fight (1938-39). And he got war anyway. Yes indeed, THAT's appeasement (and NOT entertainment): negotiating, giving something away (in Chamberlain's case countries and pieces of them he didn't own) and getting nothing in return.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare.

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