WASHINGTON — Poor Neville Chamberlain. The long-deceased British prime minister — remembered through the decades for his policy of appeasement and for the war with Hitler that it hastened — now suffers yet another disgrace. The mere mention of "appeasement" apparently sets off paranoid tantrums amongst members of the political class. Once deemed a very enlightened tool of statecraft, "appeasement" has become a slur, a hate term. Speaking before the Israeli Knesset, President George W. Bush associated appeasement with those who "believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." Kapow! The Democrats went on the offensive, though they had not been mentioned.

Pronounced House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi: "(Bush's words were) beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel." The observance of which she spoke was Israel's 60th birthday, and no member of the Israeli parliament shared her anger. In fact, many applauded the president. Pronounced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "(Bush's remarks were) reckless and irresponsible." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took leave of her campaign, where she probably has wrapped up the white supremacist vote, and denounced the president's choice of words as "offensive and outrageous."

Even the serene and august Sen. Barack Obama stepped down from his cloud of serenity to asseverate: "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack." Betraying a hint of what may very well be megalomania, the likely Democratic presidential candidate continued, "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists." Yet the president had not mentioned the senator or any other living American politician, not even Jimmy Carter, who most certainly did engage with terrorists as recently as April, when he conferred with representatives from Hamas to mull over, of all things, "human rights."

For that matter, it was not more than a year ago that Squeaker Pelosi visited with the Syrian leadership in Damascus, concluding, "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace." If the Syrians do not qualify as terrorists, they certainly give sanctuary and arms to terrorists, some of whom are using those arms in Iraq. I guess we can understand why she is sensitive when the president mentions appeasement.

As for Sen. Obama, he still is trying to wriggle out of an answer he gave to a question someone asked him during a debate last summer. As president, would he meet with the anti-American, anti-Semitic and seemingly delusional president of Iran, "without preconditions"? "I would," he answered in the sanctimonious tone that always suggests incense is burning nearby. So maybe we can understand why he and the Democratic leadership are so eager to transform yesteryear's failed policy of appeasement into a hate term. Incidentally, "irresponsible and frankly naive" was Sen. Clinton's immediate assessment of Sen. Obama's pert answer. She has shown herself to be an able critic of the Democratic front-runner. Possibly she eventually will join the McCain campaign.

One thing that all these Democrats have in common is a colossal moral superiority. As we have seen before, they repeatedly presume to set the terms of political debate. They rule over the appropriateness of words and strategies, telling us what the Republicans can and cannot say. Now they have ruled the word "appeasement" to be "reckless," "outrageous" and bereft of "dignity." The term has been applied to opponents of a forceful foreign policy for two generations, during which forceful foreign policy kept America secure. Alas, in this election, the Democrats have ruled the word "appeasement" out of bounds.

To Obama, the term is redolent of that "divisiveness" that he abhors. He has crossed the length and breadth of the land lecturing against divisiveness. So how can we end this offensive divisiveness? Well, obviously by agreeing with him and his wife. His wife is also on the campaign trail, and when Republicans react unfavorably to her complaints about America, he tells them to "lay off (his) wife." What kind of a person tells us what we can and cannot say and with whom we must be in agreement? To my mind, it is a bully, and now we are going to have months of watching Sen. Obama attempt to bully Sen. John McCain. Over in Vietnam somewhere, there are retired jailers who could tell him that one cannot bully McCain, even when you have him flat on his back with broken bones.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to The New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His newest book is "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House." To find out more about R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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