The Great Thomas Sowell on our Moral Paralysis on Iran

The inestimable Dr. Thomas Sowell on Iran at NRO. Sowell is, IMAO, one of the finest minds of our time.

Are We France?
Moral paralysis. By Thomas Sowell

“Moral paralysis” is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England, and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.

It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times.

Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing — and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him.

Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today — “negotiations.”

No leader of a democratic nation was ever more popular than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — wildly cheered in the House of Commons by opposition parties as well as his own — when he returned from negotiations in Munich in 1938, waving an agreement and declaring that it meant “peace in our time.”

We know now how short that time was. Less than a year later, World War II began in Europe and spread across the planet, killing tens of millions of people and reducing many cities to rubble in Europe and Asia.

Looking back after that war, Winston Churchill said, “There was never a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action.” The earlier it was done, the less it would have cost.

At one point, Hitler could have been stopped in his tracks “without the firing of a single shot,” Churchill said.

That point came in 1936 — three years before World War II began — when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, in violation of two international treaties.

At that point, France alone was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention.

As Hitler himself confided, the Germans would have had to retreat “with our tail between our legs,” because they did not yet have enough military force to put up even a token resistance.

Why did the French not act and spare themselves and the world the years of horror that Hitler’s aggressions would bring? The French had the means but not the will.

“Moral paralysis” came from many things. The death of a million French soldiers in the First World War and disillusionment with the peace that followed cast a pall over a whole generation.

Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions. As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: “France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core.”

It was morally paralyzed.

History may be interesting but it is the present and the future that pose the crucial question: Is America today the France of yesterday?

We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons while the United Nations is moving slowly — or not at all — toward doing anything to stop them.

It is a sign of our irresponsible Utopianism that anyone would even expect the U.N. to do anything that would make any real difference.

Not only the history of the U.N., but the history of the League of Nations before it, demonstrates again and again that going to such places is a way for weak-kneed leaders of democracies to look like they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing.

The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don’t think we have the guts to stop them.

Read it all and  for a rare treat please click below on "CONTINUE" to watch an interview with Dr. Sowell, on of the finest minds of our time.Video hat tip Hip Hop Republican

Comments

[seeteufel]

I do know something of the 1936 Rhineland invasion that is not commonly known. I had an uncle that was in the army, he participated in the invasion, he told me that though they had rifles, very few, because of severe shortages, he amongst them, were issued bullets. Pretty much the same as the current muslim invasion of Europe, like Hitler, they pretend to have power and use bluff until they actually get it. No wonder Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the islamic world.

[photoncourier.blogspot.com]

The Rhineland incursion was indeed the last point at which Hitler could have been stopped with relatively low human cost. It is interesting and chilling to read some of the arguments that were then made against a military response to the German action:

"They (the Germans) are only going into their own back-garden"..British politician

"There is no more reason why German territory should be demilitarized than French, Belgian, or British"...British newspaper.

"The United States will accuse us of imperialism"...French politician (Flandin)

"The hate of the Germans for us will increase"...Flandin again

"If, this very night, two months before the elections, a general mobilization is decreed, we shall be swept out of Parliament...And we shall have given the world the hateful spectacle of war-mongering. Abandoned morally by all the great Powers, we are risking, moreover, if we answer back, the worst of moral and material disasters"...Another French politician (Deat)

And, a few years earlier, some "self-esteem" thinking from the British politician Lord Lothian: "If Germany were allowed to rearm, this would give her an 'equality' that would enable her to sit without any sense of weakness or inferiority at the Disarmament Conference."