Neville Bush

Khartoum! Where hearts were entertaining June...

Yeah right.

Pissy Pants has sent his envoys over to the Sudan to treat with the genocidal dictator thereof, one Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Despoiler of Darfur, according to the Washington Post story linked at MSNBC.com, Scourge of All Things Bush and Hillary.

Lucky us.

So, it would seem there are some genocidal dictators it's perfectly acceptable to negotiate with, in Bush World, so long as he or his people are doing the chit-chat; the minute someone else does it or says they will, it's Chamberlainian Appeasement to be denounced at home and in foreign lands.

Got it.

Bashir's government has been accused by Bush of participating in a "genocide" in Darfur, the only U.S. government use of such a strong accusation. Yet Richard S. Williamson's visit to Khartoum follows a series of direct contacts by senior Bush administration officials with the Sudanese president, including Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Rice's deputies, and several special presidential envoys.

Bush has spoken to or exchanged letters with Bashir on numerous occasions, underscoring how White House policy has departed from his pointed public call to shun talks with radical tyrants and dictators. His appointees have also pursued aggressive diplomacy with North Korea and Libya and have even conducted limited business with Cuba, Syria and Iran.

In the case of Sudan, experts are deeply divided about how much the administration's engagement has improved conditions in a country beset for decades by mass violence and famine. It has at least provoked charges of hypocrisy, because Bush recently accused those advocating talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other radical figures of "appeasement."

"The Bush administration has spent years not only talking at very senior levels with one of the world's worst tyrants, who is responsible for genocide, but also reportedly offered the regime major concessions in exchange for minor steps and rolled out the red carpet for some of its most reprehensible officials," said Susan E. Rice, who handled Africa policy in the Clinton administration and is a top adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Of course the issue isn't "appeasement" at all, it's maintaining power, authority and control over not just the processes of government and diplomacy, but the very act of thinking about them.

Thus, anyone else who does or says something about diplomatic overtures toward foes, real or imagined, is instantly tarred with the "appeasement" brush because that's the means to defend political power over opposition. What the Bush regime does, including appeasing foes (such as by withdrawing bases from Saudi Arabia, overthrowing Saddam, etc, both of which were desired and/or ordered by the Arch Devil Usama) may have nothing at all to do with the rhetoric it uses in pursuit and exerecise of power.

Of course Americans have been witnessing this for years, and they're heartily sick of it. They see Princess McCain trying to pull the same sort of crap.

What's interesting in some ways is that the Washington Post has chosen to call "bullshit" here.

Wonders never cease.