Consider this a long-range, opening shot in an elitist attempt to justify an eventual Obama Administration foreign policy:
Quite apart from their unhappy consequences, all these invocations of Munich begin by rewriting history. Chamberlain was a democratic leader who knew that most of his people understandably did not want to go to war in 1938, only 20 years after another terrible war in which about three-quarters of a million British men had been killed.
Besides which, Chamberlain was far from alone in thinking that he was addressing a real grievance. The one accurate thing about Kagan’s quaint comparison is that the residents of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia no more want to be ruled by Georgia today than the Sudeten Germans wanted to be ruled by the Czechs 70 years ago.
While it’s lamentably true that German resentment at “the slave treaty of Versailles” following World War I helped bring Hitler to power, there is another inconvenient truth: Between the wars, British and American liberals almost universally believed that the post-1918 settlement had been unjust. H.N. Brailsford, the leading leftist English commentator on foreign affairs, had written in 1920 that, of all the Versailles treaty’s redrawing of borders, “the worst offence was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule.” Experience seemed to show that nationalism was the great force of the age and that it needed to be assuaged — or appeased, a word first used, it should be remembered, by those who advocated doing so.
To be sure, Churchill denounced the Munich agreement in a resonant speech: “This is only the first sip, the first bitter foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.” But he was speaking as someone untroubled by any sympathy for national self-determination.
In other words, Munich wasn’t a bad deal, in and of itself…the Sudenten Germans were just going for national self-determination, Hitler’s Germany had a legitimate interest in the fate of the Sudentenland, Czechoslovakia had no business ruling the Sudentenland, Germans were justly outraged over the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles…later in the piece, the author also notes that Churchill was opposed to Indian independence, and thus didn’t have a leg to stand on when he argued that Britain must support democratic Czechoslovakia.
In all my time of reading on matters of history and politics, I’ve never seen a better example of pure, unadulterated, ignorant bullsh**.
The principles at stake in the Munich talks weren’t the fate of the Sudenten Germans, the Republic of Czechosolovakia, the validity of the Treaty of Versailles or, even, the worth of democracy and national self-determination – all of these were raised, by Hitler and those who wished to appease him, in order to cover up the fact that the issue was collective security against unprovoked aggression. It was felt, post-WWI, that had Imperial Germany been confronted with the entire anti-German coalition of 1918 in 1914, Germany would have been restrained from launching its war of aggression against France and Russia. The League of Nations was set up to commit all the powers concerned to come to the defense of any power or group of powers threatened by un-provoked attack. Churchill, at the conclusion of the Munich, was not so much aghast at the loss of Czechoslovakia (though, in a purely military sense, the loss of Czech military power and bases was a catastrophe for the Anglo-French alliance), but at the fact that Hitler was assured by the Anglo-French alliance that un-provoked aggression would not be thwarted. When Chamberlain, 9 months later, asserted that Britian would stand by Poland if she were attacked by Germany, Hitler justifiably considered this to be a worthless statement, and thus World War Two was assured.
What is wanted here? A justification for a surrender to Putin’s imperial ambitions and Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons and the export of Jihad designed to eventually destroy Israel. This will also be applied to any Chinese demand upon Taiwan and any continued nuclear blackmail by North Korea – and, indeed, any and all demands made upon the West, and the United States, by anyone who ranges himself against same. While Obama’s asinine statement that he’ll meet with tyrants without pre-conditions has caused consternation among the wise, people of the left are delighted with the idea – viewing the West in general, and the United States in particular, as the source of the world’s ills (just as apologists for tyrants in the 1930’s so identified the West in general and the British Empire in particular), the demands of tyrants – as long as they are anti-Western and especially anti-American – are entertained as legitimate voices which must be accommodated in the interests of peace and justice.
We must not un-learn the lesson of Munich – we must assert, always and everywhere, that un-provoked aggression will be met, and defeated, regardless of cost. And, no, what we did in Iraq wasn’t un-provoked aggression and any attempt here to equate liberating Iraq and selling out Czechoslovakia is the attempt of a fool – and a wicked fool, into the bargain. This is, unfortunately, which is being stored up for us and which will be unleashed under an Obama Administration – the elites of the world are desirous of a world in which the United States is weakened, tyrants strengthened and more and more of the decisions of the world are taken out of the hands of the people and placed in the hands of elites, who will travel to various Munichs around the world and slowly but surely sell us all into slavery, just so long as the elites can remain on top, and in extreme wealth and comfort.
They on the left have been slavering after this for ages, and in Obama they see their big chance – an ignorant man who will be easily manipulated into doing whatever the elite wishes to do. To imagine that Obama – who seems to not have an iota of foundation in world affairs and history – will be able to prevent well-informed elites from imposing on him a policy of appeasing tyrants is to hope against all available evidence. For the sake not just of the United States but of the people of the world – and especially those people of the world, our brothers and sisters, who labor under tyranny – we must prevent Obama from coming to power…he make for us a bitter cup of misery and eventual world war, and perhaps ultimate defeat. We can stop this by the mere fact of keeping him out of office – or we can allow it by mere fact of not working hard enough for victory.
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