Wars and changing things

It is interesting, isn't, that the current peace-at-any-costs crowd keep quoting Neville Chamberlain's famous "wars never solve anything" speech. They seem resolutely determined to ignore a few nasty realities:

1) Wars have, repeatedly, solved many things. World War II comes to mind, if only because Mr. Chamberlain played such a huge role in its coming and the nature of it when it did finally arrive. The world that was before World War II was not the world that emerged from the end of that war, and the heinous barbarisms of National Socialism were put to bed. It took war, as in specific and direct willingness to stand up and say "this far and no further" and actually enforce the "no further" part, to end National Socialism/Fascism. It took the Cold War to put sealed to the Soviet Union and its murder of millions of its own citizens during its existence. It took the Civil War... and so forth and so on. We could list the wars that changed the world and it would be a very long list. We can list the times appeasement has solved anything... easily, because the list contains no items.

2) Mr. Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, his giving over the populations of Austria, the Rhineland, Czechoslovokia to Nazi dominion as olive branches to "keep the peace" (for who? Certainly not the Czechs who were abandoned, etc.)... this peace-at-any-cost effort let Hitler have several additional years with which to build up his war machine. Had Mr. Chamberlain instead confronted Hitler when he moved back into the Rhineland, confronting rather than appeasing, they would have broken a completely unprepared Wehrmacht and removed Hitler. Or, rephrased: Had Mr. Chamberlain been willing to back up peace with actual resolve and used force, he would have fought a foe totally unprepared to be confronted -- a foe counting on, among others, Mr. Chamberlain's "peace-at-any-cost" nature to let him get away with things. Hitler was right, and he swallowed up whole countries with the blessings (which is what appeasing someone who just occupied a sovereign nation against its will is) of the peace-at-any-cost crowd. It is shocking that anyone would want to replicate the fecklessness of the appeasement crowd, yet here we are (again) listening to the same drivel.

Here's a simple primer. The terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in the early 90s -- as a test, we now know from captured writings and speeches from Bin Laden and others, to see if the U.S. would actually react to being attacked... or roll over and do nothing. And do nothing, to them, included such lunacy as "indicting them in federal court" and going after their financial connections. Which is all the Clinton Administration did. So they hit again, continuing to test the resolve of the U.S. administration -- from bombing our embassy, to killing navy soldiers aboard a ship hit by missiles, and more. And at each turn... we rolled over and took it, doing nothing that would actually imperil these terrorists (and in fact, when the Clinton Administration had the opportunity to seize Bin Laden, it refused to take it, and the country that had offered to turn him over had to let him go). The lesson that Bin Laden and others learned through the 90's, by constantly killing American citizens? That we wouldn't do anything that actually hurt them or imperil them in response. Once again, the "peace-at-any-costs" crowd and their mentality taught a very clear lesson to another violent group: that we can be hit and killed and we'll do nothing in response, nothing that actually has any practical bearing or threat to them. (unless you count bombing an empty factory that the CIA told the administration BEFOREHAND was empty as "doing something).

So all those who couldn't foresee the terrorists continuing to escalate their attacks on the U.S., since they'd been taught throughout the 90's that they could get away with it... raise your hand and go back to 1st grade. We taught them they could kill us and we'd do nothing in response. We taught them that lesson through the 90s. Bush was in office for only a bit over eight months when 9-11 went down. The lessons the terrorists had learned and their willingness to attack and kill Americans came before those eight months, in the prior decade. Which is why we have Bin Laden's expressed astonishment at the fact that the U.S., to quote him, "actually did something" in response -- by invading Afghanistan and going after the one country that was Bin Laden's host. Of course he was astonished -- he didn't think a U.S. President would actually, to quote him again, "do something".

And we're headed toward another presidential election, where the likes of John "I'll appease terrorists forever" Kerry will be dominant on the Democrat-side of the aisle. The one criteria, be it Republican candidate or Democrat, we should hold is this: anyone stupid enough to think that appeasing villains will achieve anything other than causing more and worse problems later should be laughed out of the election -- not voted for.