[CS-FSLUG] OT: Europe, thy name is Cowardice

[David Aikema]

On 7/25/05, Fred A. Miller <fmiller at lightlink.com> wrote:
> Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and
> France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they
> noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.

There was pretty strong support for pacifism post-WW1, and seemingly a
general sentiment that perhaps the treaty of Versailles had been too
harsh.  If you examine the records you'll note that through much of
the the time that the appeasement process was underway, so was
rearmament in those countries.  You can't fight an enemy with weapons
that you don't have.

Honestly, I think that France was probably closer than either Britain
or the USA to taking action during such things as Hitler's rearmament
of the Rhineland.

If you look at the USA - its policy towards Jewish immigrants and also
it's late date of entry into the war - than perhaps it has a greater
share of the blame than Britain and France.

> Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then

Up to some time in the 1920s there were US, British, French, etc.
troops fighting against the communists.  At the time I don't think
that they could afford to keep fighting at that point in time (and, if
you look at the historical record, you'll note that other places in
Europe were pretty close to communism at the time).

It also happens to be rather hard to fight a war when your country has
been blown to smithereens, and you have a whole lot of soldiers killed
& wounded.  And if you think about it, a lot of the negotiations took
place between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchhill.  I see one US
president on that list, and no president of France. ... if you're
looking to assign blame that is.

> Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000
> victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the
> self-righteousness of the peace-movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to
> George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the

I'll grant you that a policy of pacifism can make a war a necessity
where action taken earlier might have not been as bad.

> American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the
> corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

See the book IBM & the Holocaust for a wonderful example of how a US
corporation acted at the time of WW2.  Try also the book The American
Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich
which deals with Ford's position at that time.

> For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of
> additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American
> economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake
> - literally everything.

The question is whether his policy is effective in dealing with the
problem at hand, or not.

David