Topic category:  Other/General

JFK's election as President of the United States of America in 1960 led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco the next year and his meeting in Vienna with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1961 led to the Cuban Missile Crisis the year after that (because Khrushchev concluded that young Kennedy was weak and chose to try to take advance of that perceived weakness by installing offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from the United States).

Would the election of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. as the 44th President of the United States of America in November of 2008 result in nuclear war in the Middle East, sooner or later, because Israel would conclude that it needs to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons if no one else does, just as it decided to stop the late Saddam Hussein's Iraq from developing nuclear weapons during the Reagan Administration? Would Israel opt to attack, and use its own nuclear weapons to get the job done, BEFORE Inauguration Day 2009?

Team Obama may say that's unthinkable, but the truth is that it was not long ago that Israel took out a facility in Syria being used to develop a Syrian nuclear capacity and Obama's declared willingness to personally talk unconditionally with the rulers of Iran and Syria, the state sponsors of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, may well prompt Israel to strike while George E. Bush is still the President of the United States.

Senator William Borah (1865-1940), a Republican isolationist, lamented as Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

Senator Borah was a hopelessly hopeful (and obviously enormously egotistical) optimist whose optimism was not tempered by realism.

Definitely NOT presidential material, especially in the Nuclear Age.

History shows that legitimizing and aggrandizing Hitler made him a greater threat, not a lesser one, much less no threat. The 1938 Munich Pact was a big mistake from the perspective of the appeasers and a big success for Hitler. So too was holding the 1936 Olympics in Germany. Treating Hitler as appeasable strengthened him.

Will the naturally hopeful American people become reckless and entrust the Presidency of the United States of America to a charismatic young fellow who is feckless?

That's what Team Obama wants.

Winston Churchill: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last."

Israelis don't feed crocodiles.

Wikipedia: "Appeasement, literally: calming, reconciling, acquiring peace by way of concessions or gifts.... Most commonly, appeasement is used for the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles. Usually it means giving in to demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war. Since World War II, the term has gained a negative connotation....of weakness, cowardice and self-deception."

Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (1968): "At bottom, the old appeasement was a mood of hope, Victorian in its optimism, Burkean in its belief that societies evolved from bad to good and that progress could only be for the better. The new appeasement was a mood of fear, Hobbesian in its insistence upon swallowing the bad in order to preserve some remnant of the good, pessimistic in its belief that Nazism was there to stay and, however horrible it might be, should be accepted as a way of life with which Britain ought to deal."

Neither form of appeasement works.

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., the current Pied Piper of Hope and Change, announced during a debate last year that as President of the United States he would negotiate with the repulsive rulers in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Venezuela without preconditions.

Obama's chief rival for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, quickly and quite properly described that kind of presidential approach as naive.

Naive: "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment."

To be sure, the approach to dangerous dictators that Obama declared he would take as President is hopelessly deficient in worldly wisdom and informed judgment.

Reality: On national security, Obama is no Clinton, and Clinton is no John Sidney McCain.

My article titled "Barack Obama as Arrogant Appeaser?" elicited the usual wide range of reaction.

Hank Roth evaluated the article as "excellent" in the subject line of his email to me and emailed this text message:

"I just read your article at WEBcommentary and I was blown away by it. It is the best analysis I've read. I want to either link to it or repost it on my pnews.org site. I'll tell you, since this primary and the complete bankruptcy of the left I can easily see how former liberal Democrats became neocons. I've been converted just this year - although I have been moving that way for some time. But the gradualism gave way to punctuated change with the statements coming from Obama and others around him. I'll be voting for McCain in November. I'm also very concerned about the left's extreme hatred for Israel and I hope the appeasement for Islamists is finally coming to an end. (See Malanie Phillip's article in Specatator.co.uk vis-a-vis the 60th Anniversary of Israel and appeasement - written weeks ago.)

"Thanks again. Keep up the good fight. Times are fraught with danger. And the Democrats are also a great and grave threat to our national interests and safety."

But Obama apologist Adam Roth disdainfully disagreed:

"Please note that Senator Obama never stated that diplomatic discussions with the leadership of adversarial nations would convert them. A careful review of his foreign policy statements does not reveal a naive and poorly informed individual. Unfortunately, the common Republican talking points in your essay don't have any basis in fact. Every four years the Republicans pull out their playbook and start targeting the Democratic presidential nominee with the same rhetoric. Regarding diplomatic discussions with Iran, please note that our Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, recently noted, 'We need to sit down and talk with them.' And, in fact, over the past few months there have been discussions in Iraq between representatives of both nations -- the U.S. and Iran. Senator Obama wants to improve and expand our nation's diplomatic efforts. This has nothing to do with appeasement. An objective, intellectually honest analysis of the Bush/Cheney administration's performance in the middle east reveals a historic blunder of profoundly troubling dimensions. For example, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been of tremendous benefit to Iran and certainly not the U.S. Finally, the attempt to compare the current and complex situation in the middle east to the complex cauldron of national forces that provided an opening for German, Italian, and Japanese military aggression from the '30's and early '40's resulting in WWII is pointless because the primary elements lack comparative values. Of course, those who want to use a significant period in history to demonize their opponents will continue this misleading polemical exercise."

Obviously all Roths are not the same.

Adam Roth did not indicate his age, but his email suggests that he is a relatively young and inexperienced victim of politically correct/secular extremist/morally relativistic education who has been misled and is now trying to misled others.

He either did not appreciate or refused to acknowledge that Obama had pledged presidential talks with dangerous dictators WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS and equated recent United States-Iran contacts with presidential submits without preconditions when the two obviously lack what he himself referred to as "comparative values."

HANK Roth is a wise man without ADAM Roth's handicaps.

Hank was a national security analyst at the White House during the Eisenhower Administration and also worked with the Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.

A former Commander of the Jewish War Veterans (local post). he further emailed me: "I do not believe in appeasement. It doesn't work.

He's right.

A second obnoxious Obama apologist poignantly portrayed Obama as a combination of JFK and FDR:while attacking me personally:

"'We shall never negotiate out of fear, and we shall never fear to negotiate' -John Kennedy

"You my friend are a moron, first get your facts straight, admin officials already admitted it was a slam of Obama.

"Secondly, negotiating is always the best course, we did it with the Soviets, with the Chinese for example, even having the president make the trip when needed. You are a partisan hack, who attempts to pass off his stupidity as intelligence.

"Obama has never said that he will suddenly get people to change with simply speaking, but speaking can 'You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.' -Yitzhak Rabin

"And that can only be achieved through dialogue, this doesn't mean capitulation, try learning your history, appeasement is not the act of speaking but the act of capitulation, like giving half a country away in the hope of gaining peace. No Obama believes in using a modern day Roosevelt Corollary, through dialogue, but still maintaining the option of force as a last resort."

This emailer likewise ignores the significance of presidential level talks without preconditions and suggests that a President of the United States meeting with a dictator without preconditions is not in itself an act of capitulation and an elevation of the dictator.

In fact, President Bush did NOT criticize anyone by name, but Obama quickly pretended that he HAD been personally attacked in order to raise himself to presidential level, for his own purposes, thereby demonstrating the value of even a falsified debate with a President of the United States.

In fact, President Bush was wise to reassure Israel, because last year Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, had met with Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria (in Syria), and this year former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, had met with Hamas (in the Middle East too).

Remember, Israel took out Iraq's nuclear facilities during the Reagan Administration and it is thinking very seriously about doing the same to Iran's nuclear facilities.

If Obama (already endorsed by Hamas) is elected President in November (instead of someone Israel could trust to support it), between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009, Israel, with or without the aid of the United States, may well deem military action against Iran essential to its national security.

In "Is Barack Obama America's Neville Chamberlain?," Barbara Stock eloquently emphasized why Israel may chose to act quickly if Obama is elected, or even appears likely to be elected:

"Panicked Democrats rushed to any camera and microphone that could be found to feign outrage over President Bush’s insinuation that the presumed Democratic nominee for president would go, hat in hand, to speak to leaders of countries that openly support and fund terrorism around the world. In truth, that is exactly what Barack Obama has clearly stated he would do. As the leader of the most powerful country on the face of the planet, he would meet, without any pre-conditions, with any murderous, tin-plated, dictator who wants to have his picture taken with the president of the United States.

"Hardly a week passes that the Islamic leaders of Iran, using their puppet mouthpiece, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, don’t threaten America’s friend and ally, Israel, with total annihilation. Anyone with more than one active brain cell knows that Iran is not only the greatest and most prolific exporter of terrorism in the world, but may well be only a year away from possessing nuclear weapons...."

Ms. Stock: "President Bush was not engaging in the 'politics of fear' but the politics of honesty. Appeasement has never been successful and never will be. It is no wonder that Barack Obama and his party faithful became hysterical over pointing out the fact that Obama is woefully unprepared to deal with foreign policy."

EXACTLY!

Ms. Stock asked: "Does Obama hold himself in such high regard that he honestly feels he will be able to make the Iranian leaders see the error of their ways, destroy their nuclear weapons program, and give Israel a group hug?"

Even if he does, Israelis are not deluded. And they have nuclear weapons as well as a strong survival instinct.

Ms. Stock: "On the home front, Barack Obama is bad enough with his tax, tax, and tax-some-more policies, but his neophyte and downright gullible views of foreign affairs will get Americans killed."

The man may bring nuclear war in the Middle East merely by appearing likely to be elected President!

Ms. Stock: "The Democratic reaction to President Bush’s remarks, which were general at best, is a clear indication that Obama’s total lack of knowledge of how to deal with our enemies could be an election disaster for the leftists who are backing him and they know it."

Such an election disaster for the leftists would be the best case scenario for the United States, Israel, the rest of the free world and world peace.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.