Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions. As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: "France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core."
It was morally paralyzed.
History may be interesting but it is the present and the future that pose the crucial question: Is America today the France of yesterday?
We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons while the United Nations is moving slowly -- or not at all -- toward doing anything to stop them.
It is a sign of our irresponsible Utopianism that anyone would even expect the UN to do anything that would make any real difference.
Not only the history of the UN, but the history of the League of Nations before it, demonstrates again and again that going to such places is a way for weak-kneed leaders of democracies to look like they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing.
The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don't think we have the guts to stop them.
Incidentally, Hitler made some of the best anti-war statements of the 1930s. He knew that this was what the Western democracies wanted to hear -- and that it would keep them morally paralyzed while he continued building up his military machine to attack them.
Iranian leaders today make only the most token and transparent claims that they are building "peaceful" nuclear facilities -- in one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world, which has no need for nuclear power to generate electricity.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and its international terrorist allies will be a worst threat than Hitler ever was. But, before that happens, the big question is: Are we France? Are we morally paralyzed, perhaps fatally? |