I seem to remember Bush saying similar things back in 2000; "uniter not a divider". Turned out to be nothing more than a preview of the Orwellianism that he was to introduce into government.

POW McCain is a historical myth maker in the same way as President Bush is. It is easy—like almost everything that slips from the lips of Republican authority these days, to blame Chamberlain for “appeasement” and claim that if he had declared War then all would have gone so much better for the allied forces in the war against fascism. Such childish statements are unbecoming of a would be President of the USA, but they do reveal just what kind of character POW McCain represents as well as an indication of his ability to analyze the world we live in. The proper question in relation to Chamberlain is simply what was Chamberlain to do? He was caught in the middle of a dilemma to which no good solution existed and thus he chose what he believed was the lesser of multiple evils.

In 1938 the perception of the Soviet Union by England and France was deemed an equal or perhaps even a greater threat than Nazi Germany. While the Soviets desired to be protective of Czechoslovakia (Because they were “Slavic”) they also had their demands in terms of forming a coalition with France and Great Britain. In exchange for aiding to resist the expansion of the Nazis into Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union demanded the right to annex Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland (by annex I mean invade). The two European Superpowers powers refused to allow the Soviets to occupy these countries while the Nazis in simultaneous secret negotiations with the Soviets said that they would go along with such an arrangement.

So as I said what was Chamberlain to do? If he denied the Germans access to Austria and Czechoslovakia he would have had to allow the Soviets the right to occupy the Baltic States. That too would be appeasement. The truth of the situation was further confused by the fact that it was doubted that the Soviets could be counted on in a conflict with Nazi Germany due to internal purges of Stalin which weakened them militarily. The Soviets viewed France and Great Britain as their biggest enemies in terms of creating their “global revolution”, after all they represented the Status Quo of global dominion. During WWI the Russians had more or less left the war as the conditions for the Russian Revolution crystallized thus dividing Russia from within but also abandoning their commitment to their allies. So the situation was that in 1938 Chamberlain did not have any sound possibility to contain the Nazis without willingly allowing the Soviets the right to an Anschluss (annexation) of their own. The failure of POW McCain to recognize the difficulty of Chamberlain's position is perhaps an indication of his own ineptitude to understand the world he so desires to influence as a president or perhaps the only thing the aging POW McCain remembers from his history lessons of World War II is a punchline from “The Godfather”.