A NICE RUN-DOWN OF CONSERVATIVES WHINING

This time about appeasement. According to J. Peter Scoblic writing in the LA Times, "Negotiating isn't appeasement," conservatives really want war instead of diplomacy. This began with Truman and continues to this day despite plenty of evidence that they were wrong, time after time.

- The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. ... Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment -- which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union -- constituted "appeasement."

- When Eisenhower welcomed Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to the United States in 1959, William F. Buckley Jr., the right's leader, complained that the act of "diplomatic sentimentality" signaled the "death rattle of the West."

- When President Kennedy successfully negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the crisis, conservative icon Barry Goldwater protested that he had appeased the Soviets by promising not to invade Cuba if they backed down.

- When the SALT I agreement capping nuclear arsenals came to Capitol Hill, conservative Rep. John Ashbrook (whose presidential candidacy Buckley supported in 1972) said that "the total history of man indicates we can place very little reliance on treaties or written documents. This is especially true when the agreements are with nations or powers which have aggressive plans. Hitler had plans. Chamberlain's Munich served only to deaden the free world to reality. The communists have plans. SALT will merely cause us to lower our guard, possibly fatally."

- Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the elected face of the burgeoning neoconservative movement, charged President Carter with "appeasement in its purest form" for negotiating SALT II, which set equal limits on the number of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles and bombers.

- When he [Reagan] and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which for the first time eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, Buckley's National Review dubbed it "suicide." The Conservative Caucus took out a full-page newspaper ad saying "Appeasement is as unwise in 1988 as in 1938." It paired photos of Reagan and Gorbachev with photos of Neville Chamberlain and Hitler.