We all know the story by now: Monkey boy decided to visit Israel and break with a long standing unspoken rule against utilizing visits to foreign countries to score cheap political points at home.
The very word appeasement has become virtually synonymous with the name of one particular gentleman: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and the worst thing in U.S. foreign policy is to be compared to this man.
We are told that we need to learn history's lesson. This message is insulting to Britons - stalwart allies of the United States - as it shows not only a lack of interest, but also of sympathy, with British history. We learn of Chamberlain and the Munich accords, and that is all we remember. But who was Neville Chamberlain, and what were the circumstances surrounding his and Europe's fate?
Believe it or not, Europe (and the world), does have its own history, and it's not exclusively relevant to the history of the United States...
Europe, wracked by the Depression, was in poor shape to meet the challenges posed by Stalin and Hitler. The Western Powers were absorbed with their own affairs. The USA was absent. The states of East Central Europe were weak and divided. At the very time that the idea of collective security was mooted, Europe's attention was diverted by the Civil War in Spain. - Norman Davies, "Europe - a History"
(There's that bloody context thing again. That bloody nuance thing (it's a French word, isn't it?). Real (republican) men don't fiddle about with such nonsense! Even the word context sounds somewhat effete and European!)
And where-o-where did that Depression originate? Much as the current financial crisis, it originated on Wall Street. We learn about the Great Depression, and about the Okies and the Dustbowl. We often forget that it was runaway inflation that allowed a certain A. Schickelgruber to come to power. In Germany, it got to the point that people were taking wheelbarrows when they went shopping. Not to put their groceries in, mind you, but to carry their money with them, so devalued had the D-Mark become!
In Germany, the rise of Hitler and his Nazi Party was unquestionably connected to the Great Depression. - Norman Davies, Ibid.
And what of England? It is very easy to sit in an armchair (or stand behind a bully pulpit in a country which the British helped to create), and ridicule the actions of British politicians, when one lives in the wealthiest country in the world, a country that has been attacked twice on home soil during her history (War of 1812 & 9/11 terrorist attacks. And please, don't throw Pearl Harbor at me: it wasn't a state until Ike made it so, it was a territory. To claim that it was an attack on American soil is akin to the British claiming that an attack on the Falklands is on British soil). In World War I, the British had lost nearly a million men, an entire generation practically wiped out.
My mouth was dry, my eyes were out of focus, and my legs quaking under me. I found a water-bottle full of rum and drank about half a pint; it quieted me, and my head remained clear. Samson lay groaning about twenty yards beyond the front trench. Several attempts were made to rescue him. He had been very badly hit. Three men hot killed in these attempts; two officers and two men, wounded. In the end his own orderly managed to crawl out to him. Samson waved him back saying that he was riddled through and not worth rescuing; he sent his apologies to the company for making such a noise...
...My memory of that day is hazy. We spent it getting the wounded down to the dressing-statinon, spraying the trenches and dug-outs to get rid of the gas, and clearing away the earth where trenches were blocked. The trenches stank with a gas-blood-lyddite-latrine smell. - Robert Graves, "Good-bye to All That."
It is very easy while one travels around the world in a custom-made jet, dining on the finest food and sleeping in the lap of luxury (but I had to give up golf!!!) to forget what our allies, the British, went through. Rations (sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, alcohol & much more), air-raids, Shell shock, and the coup-de-grace, Influenza, which killed far more than the war did.
But who was Neville Chambelain?
ALONE. That is the title of the chapter that discusses World War II from the British perspective in Roy Strong's The Story of Britain - A People's History. The rest of Europe had fallen into Axis darkness, or remained neutral, and the USA was in the grips of isolationism.
With hindsight Hitler's unbalance is all too apparent, but no one at the time recognised his rise as the advent of another Napoleon bent on dominating the [European] Continent. Neville Chamberlain was one of those who believed that Germany had been ill-treated in 1918 [Treaty of Versailles], and looked to pacify her. That process has been called 'appeasement', condemned in retrospect as weakly giving in, but in fact it can also be seen as an honest attempt to reach a settlement which would avert another catastrophe. Even with this attitude it is significant that in precisley the same year in which Hitler set about re-arming Germany, Chamberlain began covertly to step up British rearmament. Covertly because public opinion would have been against it and so politically was the Labour Party.
So, the great appeaser actually turns out to be a sly master of realpolitick. Chamberlain was much maligned by the conservatives in England, and lost out to Winston Churchill, who was an excellent war-time PM but a lousy peace-time one (he lost out after the end of the war).
It should also be noted that the British Empire had many other concerns prior to WWII, such as problems in Ireland, the looming threat of Bolshevism, and the Japanese conquest of Manchuria.
Concessions were made to Hitler in attempt to prevent another war which would claim millions of lives and destroy Europe and the British Empire. Hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps it is fair to say that Chamberlain (and the British people) were willing to remain at peace by any means necessary.
The language of appeasement is used today primarily in reference to Iran. Iran is not demanding a large chunk of central Asia, with the excuse that it is a dagger poised to strike at it's heart (as Hitler did with the Sudentenland). Iran has no plans to attack its neighbors, and Israel is armed to the teeth (vs. Poland, which nobly fought against the Panzern of Nazi Germany with Cavalry).
In fact, given that Washington has been distracted from North Korea and South America, it could be argued that the Bush administration has been doing its own appeasement, as Pyongyang acquires nuclear weapons, and Left-wing governments in South America nationalize resources that were once seen, as a chose entendu under the Monroe Doctrine, as belonging to the United States.
China is crushing the Tibetans, and the Bush Administration, deeply in debt to the government in Beijing, does nothing. Appeasement?
It is fair to say that under Chamberlain, mistakes were made. It is also fair to say (and not said enough today) that COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS!
More than an insult and affront to the Democratic party and Israelis, such a comparison is a grave insult to the British and Germans.
But what else do we expect from commander codpiece?
"And the end of fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased
And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East'."
- Rudyard Kipling, The Naulahka