Appeasement shoe fits top Democrats and they're furious
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
A close rephrasing of Neville Chamberlain’s after-thought on naively appeasing Adolf Hitler goes to the effect that, “He was a gentleman upon whose word I thought I could rely.”
The psychotic Hitler turned out to be such a non-gentleman that he promptly labeled Chamberlain a “worm,” and soon afterwards lurched Nazi Germany into World War II.
What brings this to mind is a relevant and timely speech delivered in Israel last week by President Bush. And Barack Obama’s furious reaction to Bush’s main point – appeasement.
Addressing the parliament of Israel on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish State, the president aptly warned against appeasing dictators as they rush towards ultimate weapons and war – just as Chamberlain appeased Hitler at Munich.
It is more than an aside to note that Bush’s warning was delivered in a nation that was itself born as a result of appeasement, failed leadership and misguided “peace” movements.
Obama and other leaders in an increasingly pacifist Democrat party seem especially irate about President Bush’s reference to a U.S. senator.
Although not named by Bush, the reference was to Idaho Sen. William Borah, who upon learning that Hitler’s panzer divisions had struck Poland with devastating results, lamented that if only he could have talked to Hitler, war might have been avoided.
Nor did Bush name Obama or any other Democrat. The outcries seemed more a case of the shoe fitting and of Obama’s eagerness to put it on.
For nearly a year, Obama has been outspoken in saying that he wants to meet with the worst despots of the Middle East and elsewhere. No preconditions, one-on-one and within his first year in office. According to his list, that would include sitting down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Bashar Assad of Syria, Kim Jung Il of North Korea, Cuba’s Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Does anyone find Obama’s mano-a-mano approach strange? It would seem a bit of effrontery, coming from a freshman senator halfway though his first term with a background as an Ivy League intellectual and community organizer trolling Chicago’s South Side on behalf of a liberal voter organization.
This prepares him to go up against an A-team of ruthless dictators?
Before he moves into the White House, if he does, Obama should explain what he thinks a wolfish Ahmadinejad might want from Little Red Riding Hood.
In the interest of avoiding confrontation with evil, what is Obama willing to give away in the name of the United States and its allies?
Maybe more “land for peace?” That concept was as popular with Hitler as it is with Israel’s enemies today.
Possibly Iran could be left alone to work out its nuclear objectives? In return, Ahmadinejad might personally guarantee that Iran’s nuclear capacity would be used for peaceful purposes only
The reality of Ahmadinejad is that he is not ready for war yet. He simply wants time to get a nuclear weapon and change the equation for dealing with the West.
Chamberlain was blind to the concept of real evil in the world and he was willing to talk and talk. So was Hitler. He talked, bluffed, talked, bullied, and talked some more through what turned out to be the last chance the West had for any real peace, that being peace through strength, 1936-1939. When the Nazi generals and admirals were ready, Hitler stopped talking.
Ahmadinejad is a particularly war-like head of state. He seems to have consolidated himself as the focal point for militant Islam. Does it really figure that he is going to barter away these credentials to the well-spoken new guy on the block in Washington? Hardly.
Nor is Ahmadinejad likely to agree to stop killing Jews, since that is the central tenet of his worldview.
The appeasement shoe that Obama slipped on himself tightened with Bush’s speech, and he immediately started stretching for examples from earlier presidencies. The most ill conceived was Obama’s reference to the “success” of the young John F. Kennedy in a 1961 meeting in Vienna with Nikita Khrushchev.
So unsuccessful, in fact, was that meeting that Khrushchev came away convinced Kennedy was a feckless, inexperienced lightweight. Within months, Khrushchev ordered the start of the Berlin Wall. The next year, the Russian Navy was steaming for Cuba with nuclear-capable missiles, prompting a world crisis. The result was a boxed-in Kennedy having to agree in 1962 that in exchange for Soviet forbearance on introducing nukes and missiles into Cuba, the United States would lay off Fidel Castro and Cuba forever, giving communism its first base in the hemisphere.
At Munich 70 years ago, Chamberlain and the democracies gave Hitler Austria and a part of Czechoslovakia.
In exchange, they got Hitler’s signature on a piece of paper and a worthless pledge of peace.
A year later, they got the start of the bloodiest war in human history.
May 2008
