Let us not repeat the mistake of appeasing Hitler

From Suzanne Fields:

A familiar word is creeping back into the arguments over whether America, with whoever wants to go with us, should make a preemptive strike against Iraq. The word is "appeasement," as in "Munich." We could call it "Baghdad."

The British, or at least the British who remember history, understand this better than most. Under the headline "Appeasement won't stop Saddam, any more than Hitler," the London Daily Telegraph offers a trenchant editorial analysis of "appeasement" as it emerged in England before World War II. There were few dissenters, but one of them was Winston Churchill. He scoffed that Neville Chamberlain's speech setting out "Peace with Honor" should have been called "peace with Czechoslovakia going to Hitler."

The informed conventional wisdom in Britain as the 1930s drew to a close was an indulgence in wishful thinking at the price of principle: "Their equivalents now," argues the Daily Telegraph, "are those in the media who think that George W. Bush is stupid, and mock his inarticulacy. They would have mocked Churchill."

The Wall Street Journal offers a period piece, an op-ed essay, "Appeasement, Then and Now," first published in1945, on the one-year anniversary of D-Day, by Thomas F. Woodlock. He recalled how Britain's Liberal Party gave Chamberlain a very hard time when it became clear that all he had gained with his appeasement was a collection of empty promises, only to provide Hitler with more time to do his very dirty work.

"Today, we have a strikingly similar situation with a single difference, a difference, however, in the parties not in the situation," he wrote on that now distant historic day, addressing the naive liberal attitudes toward the Soviet Union, as it was planning the construction of its Iron Curtain even as Allied soldiers were going ashore on Omaha Beach. Appeasement was an attitude, the inability to look at the real intentions of Stalin.

No analogy is exact, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld updates the argument with specificity for our own times. When he went to Camp Pendleton to thank the Marines for their service in Afghanistan, he compared those opposing military action against Iraq today to the pacifist voices who said in 1940 that Hitler would do nothing worse than he already had, as if swallowing Czechoslovakia was not telling enough.

"There were people saying, 'Don't do anything. He'll stop. He won't do anything terrible.'" Mr. Rumsfeld underlined his warning later in an interview with Fox News: "Think of all the countries that said, 'Well, we don't have enough evidence.' 'Mein Kampf' had been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. 'Maybe he won't attack us.' Well, there are millions dead because of the miscalculations."

Many of those who did indeed get a whiff of dead rat nevertheless foolishly persuaded themselves that peace could be bought at any price. Fortunately for our own time, wiser voices are raised. Vice President Cheney challenges us to learn from Saddam's past behavior. Saddam duped the United Nations inspectors once; why believe he would act differently today?

The inspectors, the veep noted, "were actually on the verge of declaring that Saddam's programs to develop chemical weapons and longer range ballistic missiles had been fully accounted for, and shut down." Then Saddam's brother-in-law defected, fleeing for his life, and led the inspectors to evidence documenting the secret weapons program. That was six years ago.

Hitler used the advantage of time, as evil men will do. Saddam Hussein is using time, too. The president has repeatedly warned that time is not on our side. "The people who argue (against a preemptive strike) have to ask themselves how they're going to feel at that point where another event occurs and it's not a conventional event, but an unconventional event," Mr. Rumsfeld says. "Was it right to have wanted additional evidence or additional time or another UN resolution?"

George W. Bush lacks the Churchillian gift of rhetoric that galvanized Britain, arguing that appeasement is a failure of nerve, but he could rally Congress with a marshaling of facts and a consistent and unequivocal presentation of those facts, making the case for a necessary preemptive strike.

Hitler fought two wars, one against the Allies and another against the Jews. In the end he lost both, but not without exacting a terrible price, leaving behind battlefields strewn with dead soldiers, cities of broken brick and mortar and the ghosts of 6 million Jews. And now the ghost of Hitler himself hovers over Saddam Hussein's shoulder, plainly visible to the wise.

[MMMMMM]

Iraqi Physician: Saddam's Orders to Cut Off the Ears of Defecting Soldiers and Officers Were Implemented in Iraqi Hospitals

The daily newspaper Al-Hayat published an article by Dr. 'Adel Awadh, an Iraqi physician who worked in a hospital where the ears of military defectors were surgically removed at the orders of Saddam Hussein. Awadh fled Iraq to avoid performing such surgeries. The following are excerpts of his account:
"The problem started in 1994 when Saddam Hussein issued a presidential order to cut off the ear of any military person who failed to report for military service, or defected from the army. Unfortunately, I had just started my residency after graduating from medical school. I never imagined that an Iraqi physician would be forced to perform mutilating surgeries… But this is exactly what happened… the day came when Iraqi military physicians… were forced to cut off the ears of officers and soldiers…"

http://efreedomnews.com/News%20Archive/Iraq/SpecialReportWaronIraq/M12BrutalityEars.htm

[Clarkmeister]

So? Who cares? Note that China commits similar atrocities but I don't see us clamboring to go send an army over there.

[andyfox]

In the end, the worst thing about Munich and appeasement may not be the actual event in the 1930s, but all the times it has been used to justify foolhardy military exploits in the name of not making the same mistake.

Not only are no analogies exact, but more often than not, an analogy is completely wrong. The fact that we "let" Hitler take Europe one step at a time was used as the basis for the dmonino theory in the 1950s and 1960s. What Hitler did in Poland had nothing at all to do with what happened in Vietnam and still less to what Saddam may or may not do in Iraq or elsewhere.

This is why big picture policies (Containment; The Great Society; Good vs. Evil) are doomed to tragic errors of policy. They insist on generalities that are applied to all sorts of situations that are completely different from the original exemplar and from each other.

I'm not saying a war with Iraq is necessarily wrong. But an argument that it is necessary because Saddam is Hitler reincarnated is a dangerously illogical one.

[B-Man]

Clarkmeister:

1. Two wrong don't make a right. To justify doing nothing about Iraq because China also commits bad acts is ridiculous. China obviously is an oppressive regime, but you can't possibly be suggesting it poses the same threat to U.S. interests as Iraq. China has nuclear weapons, but they would never use them against us for the same reason the Soviets didn't--it would assure their own destruction. However, weapons of mass destruction in the hands of lunatics like Hussein and those who would commit suicide attacks are far scarier, because they don't value their own lives. Their only goal is to kill.

2. As for your "who cares" comment, did you care about the attacks last September 11th? Will you care if there is a nuclear or biological attack against Washington or New York? Apparently your attitude is that we should just sit around and do nothing until we are attacked (and maybe even after we are attacked). What is it going to take to wake you up, an attack on Las Vegas?

[MMMMMM]

The point is not that we should send an army over there because Saddam is committing atrocities; rather, it's just more evidence of his ruthlessness and barbarity. Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of such an one is a foolish risk--do you really think he is unlikely to resort to nuclear blackmail once he gains nuclear capabilities? Why should the world allow tyrants WMD?

China is another issue entirely. After we have made sufficient progress in the war against terrorism and we also have a missile shield in place, if China is then still is a closed, non-democratic society with military generals who have the audacity to verbally threaten the US with nuke strikes if we should interfere with their aims of absorbing Taiwan, then perhaps we should
force them to de-nuclearize.
Maybe it will even soon be about time for the free world to unite and to systematically rid the world of dictatorships, despots and tyrannical regimes evrtywhere and to introduce democratic-style governments around the entire world. If this good riddance should come to pass it will probably be one of the greatest good riddances of all time. The free world has the might to do it now. Why allow dictators and the enemies of freedom to continue working towards achieving greater military parity?

[Clarkmeister]

I think assuming my statement "who cares that Saddam cuts his soldiers ears off" means that I wouldn't care if we got attacked is silly. But not as silly as assuming that because Saddam cuts off his soldiers' ears, he is going to attack Washington DC. What in the world does one have to do with the other?

[MMMMMM]

It is a poor analogy. A better analogy is that Saddam is Stalin reincarnated. And as the world would have been better off without Stalin, so too will it be better off without Saddam.

[Clarkmeister]

I think that eventually, what you speak of will happen. It just won't happen by use of overwhelming force. I think that there is a large chance that economic pressure and information will bring those changes about non-violently. But it will take many decades. Change comes slowly, especially in China.

The Taiwan issue is going to force us to make some very tough decisions in the not-so-distant future.

[B-Man]

Andy, you are right in that Saddam is not the reincarnation of Hitler, but he is a tyrant with horrendously evil goals. In that way, the two are similar. The question is, are we going to sit back and do nothing while he builds WMD, which may be used against us, or are we going to do something about it?

[B-Man]

Clarkmeister:

Sorry, I assumed the "who cares" applied to the points in the column I posted as well as M's post. That may have been a bad assumption. I apologize if I misunderstood what your view is, but I stand by what I said, because there are many others with that view, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

For the record, I agree with M's response to you.

[MMMMMM]

I agree that some of the changes will probably take place slowly anyway. China is too rational (except maybe for some hot-rod fighter pilots or some blustery Generals) to pose a realistic threat to us, so the main real concern at this point and soon is WMD in the hands of terrorists or those who would supply terrorists with WMD-or those who would be inclined to use WMD as blackmail in the Middle East. Saddam will also fairly soon have to ability to nuke Europe--I don't think we should allow him these potentials, given his ruthless and aggressive history, nor the potential of trying another Kuwaiti-style invasion, next time bolstered by WMD or the threat of massive use of WMD.

China will indeed probably force us to make some tough choices, and they will probably choose the moment to do so when our forces are spread out and are busily engaged elsewhere.

[MMMMMM]

Jeffrey Dahmer, as a child, tortured animals before killing them. As an adult, when he was able to torture humans, he did so.
Saddam's very nature, as borne out by his history, makes it unwise to allow him to possess the world's most destructive weapons. While cutting off the ears of his soldiers in no way implies that he will necessarily nuke Washington, given his demonstrated proclivities and ruthlessness, why give him the chance to do so at some point? And why allow him to be in a position to continue brutalizing and tyrannizing others? If anything, he has shown himself to be unworthy of being given the benefit of the doubt in many instances. The one thing he can be trusted to do is to pursue power ruthlessly.
It was foolish to allow Hitler to arm as fully as he did. The French should have beaten him back in the Rhineland at the outset upon his initial violations when they could easily have done so. Europe should have awakened much sooner.
Tyrants and despots never get better when they acquire greater power and weapons--they only get worse. The time to deal with tyrants is before they can pose real threats to the free world--when they have demonstrated their ruthlessness, and have committed aggressive acts against their neighbors, that should be the wake-up call--the time to stop them in their tracks.

[andyfox]

I don't know what we're going to do about it; apparently there is disagreement within the administration, at the highest levels, as to exactly what to do and how to do it. As I indicated in my first post, I wasn't addressing the issue of what, if anything, should be done about Saddam. What I was addressing was the danger and falacious reasoning involved in using an analogy from a situation in another part of the world 65 years ago as a basis for determining current policy. Because two people are tyrants and evil does not in any way make their situations comparable. Comparing someone to Hitler is a way of injecting emotion into the debate instead of dealing with reason, logic, and facts. Reason, logic and facts might well dictate action in Iraq, or they might not, but whether action was called for or was not against Hitler in the 1930s is completely irrelevant.

"Saddam's very nature, as borne out by his history, makes it unwise to allow him to possess the world's most destructive weapons"

One could certainly say the same thing about, for example, China and it's current leader. And an argument could be made about the United States, the only country to have used atomic weapons, to have repeatedly threatened the use on nuclear weapons, and who has been involved in more wars, military "incursions," and surreptitious undermining or other governments than any other country during the modern era (post World War II), the latter distinction being rivalled only by the former Evil Empire.

There may indeed be an argument for getting rid of the current leader of Iraq, but I haven't yet heard it. That coupled with the well-publicized hesitancy of the joint chiefs and Secretary Powell to plunge ahead make me wary of a "prememptive" war.

If the appeasement analogy holda any water, then the post comparing the upcoming war to the invasion of Poland by Hitler under the pretense of Poland's upcoming aggression and the safety of the "homeland" seems just as apt.

[MMMMMM]

"One could certainly say the same thing about, for example, China and it's current leader."

Indeed one could, although not to the same extent regarding Iraq and Saddam.

"There may indeed be an argument for getting rid of the current leader of Iraq, but I haven't yet heard it."

Somehow I'm not surprised at this.

"That coupled with the well-publicized hesitancy of the joint chiefs and Secretary Powell to plunge ahead make me wary of a "prememptive" war."

Apparently you also aren't aware that Saddam issued a call for Jihad against the USA and Israel with a full page ad in Iraq's major newspaper on Christmas Day (I think it was two years ago). Pre-emptive war? Not exactly. Al-Qaeda and others have ALREADY started a war with us. We're not talking about the USA starting a war, but rather taking steps to try to ensure that those who would attack us can't do so with mankinds' very worst and most destructive weapons.

Iraq has flouted the cease-fire agreement at every turn possible. We're not starting a war; we're just saying enough of this bullshit and we're saying it in the only language Saddam understands.

Every time the US is faced with a choice between diplomacy or war, some war partisan makes the "Munich" analogy. There's a reason for this: the argument boils down to an all-purpose case for war against anyone, anytime. All one has to do is define the adversary as "Hitler" an make diplomacy sound like appeasement and ignore all other context and history. Voila! Another bad argument for war. Cousins: "the people only understand force" and "you have to make them realize there's a price to be paid."