I'm not sure Reihan Salam really thought about this before he wrote it (via Roy Edroso):
Shakedowns of this kind have a long and undistinguished history. And let’s acknowledge that they aren’t partisan, or even American, in nature. Republican presidents have engaged in similar tactics, like the so-called “voluntary restraint agreement” the Reagan administration reached with Japanese automobile exporters. During the westward expansion of the United States, the federal government “negotiated” with sovereign Indian nations in a similar spirit. European powers engaged in a truly extraordinary shakedown of China during the 19th century, forcing a then-vulnerable empire to accept the spread of opium and surrender treaty ports like Hong Kong. Resentment of the West lingers still.
I'm sure that if Salam thought about it for a moment, he'd realize that the government pressuring BP to pay for the damage it caused out of its own pocket is not exactly "similar" to the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans or the The Opium Wars, both of which involved the coercive use of military force and large numbers of human casualties. Nor is it like the religious violence in India that followed the Godhra train burning in 2002, during which hundreds were killed.
You might as well just write "you know who else loved shakedowns? Hitler!" The quality of argument is the same, and employing a more obscure historical reference (this shakedown is just like the siege of Ma`arat al-Numan! Harrrumph!) doesn't actually change that or obscure it in any way. As a factual matter, It's now becoming clear that Salam's characterization of the negotiation, which is that "a stronger party, ignoring the conventions of a good-faith negotiation, all but forces a weaker party to bend to its will," isn't even accurate, given that BP refused some White House demands it saw as unreasonable.
I suppose the originalist argument against expanding Godwin's Law would be that it was explicitly meant to deal with Nazi comparisons, but I'd argue that comparing escrow funds to genocide or military force falls within the scope of the law, which is meant to delegitimize the use of outsized historical analogies involving comparisons between action X we disagree with and the worst moments in human history.
UPDATE: Salam writes on Twitter that "my argument re: BP is clearly completely wrong if the WH had nothing to do with BP's decision to establish the fund ... I assumed that the WH really did exercise its leverage. But I now get the sense that the WH was trying to take credit for a decision ... BP reached on its own, to arrest its freefall. And the WH decided to capitalize politically, which is entirely natural."
Fine. But even if the White House had pressured BP, it wouldn't be equal to historical incidents involving the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people.
