thought some would find this interesting reading...
The mental path to appeasement
By Tony Blankley
Jun 14, 2006
The Western response to the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons is
tracking dangerously toward appeasement and failure. It is not yet
inevitable -- President Bush has insisted in two State of the Union
addresses and currently that he will not permit it to happen. But most
government officials in Europe and here, and of course the dominant
media, are already deeply into resignation, rationalization and denial.
Indeed, in the last couple of years, the absolute exclusion of a
military option has become the only "respectable" posture amongst both
European and American officials and senior media personages.
This rationalizing mentality was epitomized by the statement of Gen.
Barry McCaffrey on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. The general is a
usually levelheaded and deeply experienced senior statesman. He has
criticized Bush's policies where he disagrees with them, but he is not
anti-Bush. His statement is worth reading carefully.
"Mr. Russert: 'So it's inevitable they get the nuclear bomb, in your
opinion?'
"Gen McCaffrey: 'I think so. I think they're going nuclear five, 10
years from now. We'll be confronted. And that's not a good outcome.
That argues that perhaps Saudi money and Egyptian technology gets an
Arab Sunni bomb to confront the Persian Shia bomb. None of us want to
see proliferation in the Gulf. This is a time for serious diplomatic
interventions.'"
The last sentence calling for diplomacy is such a feeble, mantra-like
invocation of a hopeless solution when preceded by his confident
statements that he thinks they want the bomb and will get it. Virtually
no one believes Iran only wants peaceful nuclear generation. Neither do
serious people believe that enactable economic and diplomatic sanctions
will deflect the Iranians from their objective.
Thus, the offer on the table -- to give them peaceful nuclear
technology or threaten them with non-military sanction -- suffers from
providing a "carrot that is not tempting and a stick that is not
threatening." (Ian Kershaw's "Making Friends with Hitler.")
This evolving mental path to appeasement mirrors in uncanny detail a
similar path taken by the British government to Hitler in the 1930s.
Contrary to popular history, the British government was under little
illusion concerning Hitler's nature and objectives in the early 1930s.
Those illusions only emerged as mental rationalizations later in the
1930s.
In April 1933, just three months after Hitler became chancellor of
Germany, the British government presciently assessed the man and his
plans. The outgoing British ambassador to Germany, Sir Horace Rumbold,
who had been closely observing Hitler for years, reported back to
London in a special dispatch to the prime minister on April 26, 1933.
He warned his government to take "Mein Kampf" seriously.
Rumbold assessed that Hitler would resort to periodic peaceful claims
"to induce a sense of security abroad," and Hitler planned to expand
into Russia and "would not abandon the cardinal points of his program,"
[but would seek to] lull adversaries into such a state of coma that
they will allow themselves to be engaged one by one." Rumbold was sure
that "a deliberate policy is now being pursued, whose aim was to
prepare Germany militarily before her adversaries could interfere." He
also warned that Hitler personally believed in his violent anti-
Semitism and that it was central to his government policy.
Back in London, Maj. Gen. A.C. Temperley briefed the prime minister on
the Rumbold dispatch that if Britain did not stop Hitler right away,
the alternative was "to allow things to drift for another five years,
by which time . . . war seems inevitable." In the event, general war in
Europe came in six years, not five.
But because the British people, still under the sway of their memory
of WWI, were against military action, and because the politicians
wanted to spend precious tax revenues on domestic programs, they walked
away from their own good judgment.
The unpleasantness of dealing with Hitler and the public's abhorrence
of another war led the new British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric
Phipps, responding to the Rumbold dispatch, to argue in that fateful
month of April 1933 that: "We cannot regard him solely as the author of
"Mein Kampf," for in such a case we should logically be bound to adopt
the policy of preventive war." So, he argued, "The best hope is to bind
him, that is, by a [disarmament] agreement bearing his signature freely
and proudly given. ... By some odd kink in his mental makeup he might
even feel compelled to honor it."
Here we have the 1930s version of Gen. McCaffrey's statement.
Ambassador Phipps first states the obvious: To wit, if Hitler is as the
government believes him to be, logic requires a preventive war. But
they don't want to do that, so he hopes Hitler isn't as they know him
to be, and they seek a diplomatic agreement, which even Phipps
recognized was unlikely to be honored.
Just so, Gen. McCaffrey, representing the overwhelming view of
government officials and major media in the West, first states the
obvious: Iran will get the bomb. Then he ends with: So let's just do
diplomacy.
In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The
diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a
disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something
-- even if they know it is futile.
This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as
bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in
1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to
unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.
That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to
appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be
incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb
operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?
Tony Blankley is the author of The West's Last Chance and editorial
page editor for the Washington Times.
The mental path to appeasement
By Tony Blankley
Jun 14, 2006
The Western response to the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons is
tracking dangerously toward appeasement and failure. It is not yet
inevitable -- President Bush has insisted in two State of the Union
addresses and currently that he will not permit it to happen. But most
government officials in Europe and here, and of course the dominant
media, are already deeply into resignation, rationalization and denial.
Indeed, in the last couple of years, the absolute exclusion of a
military option has become the only "respectable" posture amongst both
European and American officials and senior media personages.
This rationalizing mentality was epitomized by the statement of Gen.
Barry McCaffrey on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. The general is a
usually levelheaded and deeply experienced senior statesman. He has
criticized Bush's policies where he disagrees with them, but he is not
anti-Bush. His statement is worth reading carefully.
"Mr. Russert: 'So it's inevitable they get the nuclear bomb, in your
opinion?'
"Gen McCaffrey: 'I think so. I think they're going nuclear five, 10
years from now. We'll be confronted. And that's not a good outcome.
That argues that perhaps Saudi money and Egyptian technology gets an
Arab Sunni bomb to confront the Persian Shia bomb. None of us want to
see proliferation in the Gulf. This is a time for serious diplomatic
interventions.'"
The last sentence calling for diplomacy is such a feeble, mantra-like
invocation of a hopeless solution when preceded by his confident
statements that he thinks they want the bomb and will get it. Virtually
no one believes Iran only wants peaceful nuclear generation. Neither do
serious people believe that enactable economic and diplomatic sanctions
will deflect the Iranians from their objective.
Thus, the offer on the table -- to give them peaceful nuclear
technology or threaten them with non-military sanction -- suffers from
providing a "carrot that is not tempting and a stick that is not
threatening." (Ian Kershaw's "Making Friends with Hitler.")
This evolving mental path to appeasement mirrors in uncanny detail a
similar path taken by the British government to Hitler in the 1930s.
Contrary to popular history, the British government was under little
illusion concerning Hitler's nature and objectives in the early 1930s.
Those illusions only emerged as mental rationalizations later in the
1930s.
In April 1933, just three months after Hitler became chancellor of
Germany, the British government presciently assessed the man and his
plans. The outgoing British ambassador to Germany, Sir Horace Rumbold,
who had been closely observing Hitler for years, reported back to
London in a special dispatch to the prime minister on April 26, 1933.
He warned his government to take "Mein Kampf" seriously.
Rumbold assessed that Hitler would resort to periodic peaceful claims
"to induce a sense of security abroad," and Hitler planned to expand
into Russia and "would not abandon the cardinal points of his program,"
[but would seek to] lull adversaries into such a state of coma that
they will allow themselves to be engaged one by one." Rumbold was sure
that "a deliberate policy is now being pursued, whose aim was to
prepare Germany militarily before her adversaries could interfere." He
also warned that Hitler personally believed in his violent anti-
Semitism and that it was central to his government policy.
Back in London, Maj. Gen. A.C. Temperley briefed the prime minister on
the Rumbold dispatch that if Britain did not stop Hitler right away,
the alternative was "to allow things to drift for another five years,
by which time . . . war seems inevitable." In the event, general war in
Europe came in six years, not five.
But because the British people, still under the sway of their memory
of WWI, were against military action, and because the politicians
wanted to spend precious tax revenues on domestic programs, they walked
away from their own good judgment.
The unpleasantness of dealing with Hitler and the public's abhorrence
of another war led the new British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric
Phipps, responding to the Rumbold dispatch, to argue in that fateful
month of April 1933 that: "We cannot regard him solely as the author of
"Mein Kampf," for in such a case we should logically be bound to adopt
the policy of preventive war." So, he argued, "The best hope is to bind
him, that is, by a [disarmament] agreement bearing his signature freely
and proudly given. ... By some odd kink in his mental makeup he might
even feel compelled to honor it."
Here we have the 1930s version of Gen. McCaffrey's statement.
Ambassador Phipps first states the obvious: To wit, if Hitler is as the
government believes him to be, logic requires a preventive war. But
they don't want to do that, so he hopes Hitler isn't as they know him
to be, and they seek a diplomatic agreement, which even Phipps
recognized was unlikely to be honored.
Just so, Gen. McCaffrey, representing the overwhelming view of
government officials and major media in the West, first states the
obvious: Iran will get the bomb. Then he ends with: So let's just do
diplomacy.
In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The
diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a
disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something
-- even if they know it is futile.
This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as
bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in
1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to
unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.
That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to
appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be
incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb
operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?
Tony Blankley is the author of The West's Last Chance and editorial
page editor for the Washington Times.
