Appeasement remark backlash puzzles White House

White House counselor Ed Gillespie told reporters aboard Air Force One Friday that he was surprised by the reaction of Democrats to remarks President Bush made at Israel’s Knesset.

{mosads}Congressional leaders, who interpreted parts of Bush’s speech as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), came out in force to criticize the president. In his speech, the president stated his opposition to negotiating with “terrorists and radicals,” and, invoking Nazi Germany, rejected “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” Obama has advocated using diplomacy as part of his strategy to deal with countries like Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), among others, strongly condemned what they saw as an attack on their likely presidential nominee.

The White House on Thursday was quick to state that the remarks were not aimed at Obama and Gillespie reiterated that a day after the speech.

“I’m surprised and curious as to the reaction,” he stated, adding, “The fact is that if you look at the words, they’re pretty consistent with what the president has said in the past, and frankly consistent with what many of them have said.”

Gillespie stated that some in the White House thought that the remarks would be interpreted as a rebuke to former president Jimmy Carter, who recently met with Hamas to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

He said the line about Nazi Germany was added to the speech because it was delivered to Israel’s parliament.

He challenged congressional Democrats to point to specific language in Bush’s remarks that is “outrageous,” adding that their criticism of the president is “unjustified and unwarranted.”

Meantime, Obama again weighed in on the issue Friday, strongly rejecting Bush’s language and seeking to tie presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to the president’s views.

“That’s the kind of hypocrisy that we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer,” Obama said at a town hall meeting.