“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

This is not World War II

As much as the neoconservatives want to convince the American people that “This is Munich in 1938” and that anyone who believes in any measure short of war is Neville Chamberlain reborn, does not make it so. One constant theme throughout the War on Terror is the equating of the terrorists with the Nazis. This is delusional in and of itself.

Nazi Germany was a large, cohesive, and organized nation-state with one of the largest industrial bases in the world and the largest army in Europe. Situated in the very heart of Europe, Germany during World War II was in a perfect position to strike at multiple countries. On the other hand, Hamas is quarantined in the Gaza Strip. The terrorist organizations that threaten the United States do not have U-Boats, Panzers, or the Luftwaffe. As 9/11 and other terrorist acts throughout history have proven, terrorist tactics are both extremely deadly and dangerous - claiming that they are the reincarnation of the Blitzkrieg is ridiculous.

Differentiating Threats

The fact that the disparate terrorist organizations that are active in the Middle East do not have anywhere near the capabilities of Nazi Germany is only the beginning of where these delusional World War II comparisons fall apart. Whereas the Axis Powers of World War II were a fixed alliance, President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” were in no way allied and two of its charter members – Iraq and Iran – were bitter enemies who had fought a brutal and bloody war throughout the 1980s. One of the ultimate failings of this administration and its neoconservative surrogates has been its constant desire to conflate distinct and separate organizations and threats into one monolithic movement – even going as far as to propagate the nonexistent idea of "Islamofascism" in yet another allusion to World War II’s threat of fascism.

Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan may have had reasons that differentiated from one another at times during the war, but their purposes had a definitive commonality. Hamas and Hezbollah, while sharing similar goals and tactics, are separate threats; hold separate religious beliefs – Hamas is Sunni, while Hezbollah is Shiite; had separate reasons for their formations – Hamas as a Palestinian resistance movement and Hezbollah formed in response to the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon in the 1980s; and inhabit separate geographical areas – Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and Hamas in the blockaded Gaza Strip. Al Qaeda is, of course, the major threat that faces the American people. It is the group that perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. It is the terrorist group that should be the focus of the so-called War on Terror. Al Qaeda is a transnational group that works autonomously and without the support or operational direction from any nation-state – as the Bush administration attempted to falsely imply it did from Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (and as many neoconservatives still attempt to do). Iran has been lumped into this Islamofascist melting pot – conflating it with Al Qaeda as a threat to the U.S. But just recently Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed his desire for the United States to attack Iran in order to, basically, kill two birds with one stone.This conflation of very distinct threats – both nation-states and terrorist organizations – will not in any way help to protect the United States. It only aids in distracting from the true threats that face the American people.

One of the greatest myths in the American political discourse is that threats to Israel and the U.S. are identical. While Israel faces grave threats, and has every right to defend itself, the threats Israel faces from groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are distinct to Israel. The Israeli military is the most powerful and technologically advanced in the Middle East – thanks, for the most part, to the $3.5 billion a year in aid it receives from the U.S. taxpayers. Israel is also the only power in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons. If Israel believes its existence is threatened by Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons programs it should feel free to defend itself – it surely has the means by which to do so – but this is a separate and distinct threat from the one faced by the United States and needs to be treated as such.

Engagement vs. Appeasement

The American senator that President Bush referred to in his speech was Senator William E. Borah. According to the New York Times website, Borah was “… an Idaho Republican noted for his powers of oratory and his isolationist views.” And that he “….expressed admiration for [Hitler], and in 1939 he did indeed lament that he had not been able to talk to [him] before the Nazi invasion of Poland.” Had Borah the opportunity to speak with the Fuhrer could World War II been averted? History will never know for sure, but it is fairly certain that it would not.

The fact ignored by those who so often invoke the spectre of Munich, and the appeasement of Hitler by by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, is that by 1938 war was inevitable. The punitive Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I aided the Nazis rise to power - which ultimately led to the conflict. Nazi Germany had already been set on its course to conquer Europe. Chamberlain could either allow Hitler to annex the Sudetenland or World War II could have began in September 1938 instead of September 1939. There is no doubt that the people of the Sudetenland, and later all of Czechoslovakia and Poland, were “sold out” by the “Great Powers” of Europe - namely France and Great Britain, but this was not the turning point to war that it has been made out to be.

On the other hand, In 1986 President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland to discuss arms limitation agreements. When an impasse was reached Reagan left the negotiating table and walked away, but because of the progress that was made during the 1986 talks, an accord was reached in 1987. How many neocons (or other conservatives) are willing to call Ronald Reagan an appeaser? Richard Nixon, as president, met with China’s Mao Tse Tung – a man responsible for 30 million dead. There would be nothing stopping any president from walking away from any deal that is not in the best interest of the American people (assuming that modern presidents actually take that into consideration). Danielle Pletka, a neoconservative from the American Enterprise Institute, has even stated that the U.S. should engage Iran diplomatically before attacking – even if only as a “box-checking” exercise.

Appeasing Who?

This ridiculous conversation began when, last summer in a Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama decided to add a modicum of maturity to the political discourse on foreign policy. Obama’s contention that he would be willing to meet with the head’s of state of countries that are hostile toward the United States – such as Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and maybe even Iran – would be a step in the right direction even if the subsequent meetings did not reach any agreements. There has never been any mention of what was to be discussed or if these meetings would even mean an accord would be reached. So, who exactly would be appeased by the mere act of sitting down face to face with the leader of an unsavory country? To whom, of the supposed leaders of Islamofascism, would President Obama be offering a new version of Chamberlain’s illusion of “Peace in our time?” Osama bin Laden? Hamas? Hezbollah's Hassan Nassrallah? Mahmoud Amedinejad?

Diplomacy and negotiation are not appeasement. Appeasement is the result of poor diplomacy and negotiation. Diplomacy and negotiation are simply diplomacy and negotiation.

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