Cue the doves in places like Prague, Warsaw, Moscow, Tehran, and Caracas. Peace is at hand. Peace in our time. Central Europe, the region that has provided the kindling for so many of the conflicts that have burst forth into full flame for nearly 100 years, is once again safe from its protectors. Pardon me while I pause to fan myself as I tear up. We have been once more delivered – we, as in all humanity, that is – delivered from the mean old policies of Dubya, and company. The good guys know better. Trust them.

Pardon the preacher in me (it is, in fact, my day job), but I can’t help but think of a scripture, one that has an ominous ring to it, in light of the recent decision by the Obama administration to back away from the previously proposed and planned nuclear missile shield in and around the Czech Republic and Poland.

“For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them…” I Thessalonians 5:3 (KJV)

One might call what we are seeing these days Yogi Berra-like foreign policy, as in “It’s déjà vu all over again.” We are underestimating Iran and appeasing Russia – all in the same fell swoop. Remarkable!

Okay, one more time. The year is 1938, and there are some very bad people who are being underestimated by some very, supposedly bright, but actually just incredibly naïve people. Though it happened more than 70 years ago it is still relevant. Its relevance is reinforced each and every time those who play with matches and kindling ignore the obvious-to-anyone-with-a-brain lessons. The story will cease to be relevant when the world finally figures it out. My advice is: Don’t hold your breath.

In fact, the long ago, yet up-to-date, fiasco is known now simply by the city-name-as-a-metaphor, Munich - apologies to that wonderful Bavarian city, a place unfortunate enough to have been an international and diplomatic crime scene. David Faber, the grandson of former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, and a former Conservative Member of Parliament (1992-2001), has written a fresh, factual, engaging, definitive, and, well, haunting account of what happened back then.

The book is called, Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II.

Appeasement was never really a “bad” word until it became forever identified with the foreign policy failures in Great Britain under the premiership of Neville Chamberlain. The word itself simply means to pacify or soothe. Most of us understand that there is a measure of this required for peaceful and civilized living and discourse.

But when appeasement met Adolf Hitler, it was manipulated, twisted, scorned, and ultimately dismissed. To put it in the words of Sean Connery playing a character in the 1987 movie The Untouchables, Mr. Chamberlain had brought a knife to a gunfight in Munich. A knife crafted out of a very thin sheet of paper. But our leaders are doing even better – they are throwing the knives away.

The appeasement of the 1930s, gave way to the resolve of the 1940s, but it was a lesson learned the hard way. Is history repeating itself?

I think a better case can be made that history may be reversing itself. Back then, our nation moved from isolation and denial toward eventual engagement. It was a progression that was somewhat understandable – after all, who wants war? Now however, it seems that some are determined to move us from resolution and vigilance – the qualities that have, indeed, kept us safe for the past eight years – toward appeasement.

Think of it this way: It’s one thing to cut Neville Chamberlain some slack for what he did back then with his deliberate policy of appeasement. Many people then had been seduced into a sense of sleepy underestimation of Hitler and his henchmen. After all, even former Prime Minister David Lloyd George had visited the dictator at Berchtesgaden a couple of years earlier and was clearly smitten. He returned home, calling his Nazi host “the greatest living German” and “the George Washington of Germany.” He even had a device installed at his home in Surrey – one that would lower a large picture window into the ground, creating “the feel of a covered terrace.” It was something that had captivated him at the Eagle’s Nest. Continued...