Why The Fuss Over May's Metaphor?

"Everything I knew about history told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon, then I'd be doing exactly what Chamberlain did.'' Former U.S. president Lyndon Johnson to his biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin "If history teaches us anything, it is that we must resist aggression or it will destroy our freedom ... . Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbours." Former president George Bush Aug. 8, 1990 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait "What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? How many people's lives might have been saved, how many American lives might have been saved." Former president Bill Clinton March 23, 1999, before announcing NATO's attack on Serbia May 03, 2007 04:30 AM Thomas Walkom Why is Elizabeth May being slammed for comparing Conservative environment policy to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis? The Green party leader may be wrong or muddled (it's not clear who represents the Nazis in her metaphor). But the disparaging Chamberlain reference has long been a standard rhetorical device for politicians trying to denigrate their opponents as short-sighted. Usually, it's considered par for the course. Not so this time. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Commons that May had "diminished the Holocaust ... while belittling Canadians of faith." An anguished Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion called on May to withdraw her remarks, saying that the "Nazi regime is beyond any comparison." New Democratic Party head Jack Layton said his rival's weekend comments, made at a United Church in London, were "certainly not something we consider to be wise or appropriate." In a letter posted on its website, the Canadian Jewish Congress took May to task for "demagogic and inappropriate" remarks insensitive "to context and history." May's rejoinder is that she was just quoting someone else – which wouldn't be much of an argument if her remarks were unusually offensive. But, in fact, they were run-of-the-mill offensive. Chamberlain, the former British prime minister who signed the now infamous 1938 "peace in our time" Munich pact that allowed Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia, is a favourite whipping boy. Whenever a politician wants to make the point that an opponent is not being tough enough, the Chamberlain appeasement analogy is almost sure to come up. "It is not time for Neville Chamberlain," Stockwell Day, now public safety minister, said in 2002 as he made a spirited attack on the then-governing Liberals for cozying up to evil. "It's time for Winston Churchill." http://www.thestar.com/article/209966 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 7, 2007]

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