Memories of Munich, Threats from Tehran

By Alan Caruba

By 1938, Hitler had already made plans for the conquest of Europe or at least the parts he could not get without firing a shot. He had annexed Austria earlier that year.

In Munich, Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland was handed over to Germany by England, France, and Italy. The Czechs were not invited to participate. Despite the Versailles Treaty after World War One, under the Nazis Germany had rearmed while the rest of Europe looked on.

Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, returned home to claim that he had bought “peace in our time.” Well, he had bought a little time but few had any doubts about Hitler’s ambitions. Even Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, had bought a little time by signing a secret treaty dividing Poland with Hitler. A year after the Munich treaty, Germany invaded Poland and World War Two began.

History has an unfortunate, but utterly predictable, way of repeating itself. The same mistakes are made over and over again by men who have not taken the time to read history or who think that, by dint of their own personalities, they can change it. Barack Obama thinks he has been selected by the gods of Marxism to fulfill that destiny for America. When not “transforming” America, he yearns for a new world order based on diplomacy, but diplomacy has long been defined as telling lies on behalf of one’s country.

His Director of Intelligence, Dennis Blair, just got pushed out of the job for daring to tell him the truth about the world and these days Obama evokes snickers every time he ventures into the thicket of foreign policy and Hillary is no help.

In the history of the United States, no previous president has ever had less experience for the job. In contrast to George W. Bush who told nations he would invade you if you posed a threat, most of the world’s leaders have concluded Obama is an empty suit, a dunce, and an easy mark. The Iranians openly mock him while the rest have the decency to do it behind closed doors.

If you want to find those most wedded to insane notions of their role in history, just visit Tehran where the ayatollahs and their chief stooge, Mamoud Ahmadinejad, believe they must bring about Armageddon to ensure the return of the mythical Twelfth Imam who apparently lives at the bottom of a well.

Once the Islamic Revolution had solidified its grip on Iran in 1979, their top priority became the ability to make nuclear weapons. They have never ceased in this quest. As in 1938, the world looks on.

Iran is the new Nazi Germany circa 2010. It bears a lot of similarities, the most obvious of which is its intense hatred of Jews that is manifested in denying the Holocaust and with daily threats to wipe Israel off the map.

The irony of this is that Iran’s Arab neighbors—Iran is Persian, not Arab—have reached the point where they hate Iran even more than they say they hate Israel. The radical Shiite Iran is an anathema to the mostly Sunni Arab nations of the Middle East and the notion that it might acquire nuclear weapons has them casting their eyes lovingly on Israel.

The Iraqis have no love for the Iranian’s ideological extremism. That’s why Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, along with secular Sunni political allies, won the recent elections there. Iranian bombs and terrorists have killed more Iraqis than the U.S. military.

You cannot look around the region without finding a nation, other than Syria, that regards Iran as anything other than a menace, either directly or through proxy forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza strip. Members of Osama bin Laden’s family are said to be guests of Iran.

The Israelis have made no secret of the fact that they do not intend to let Iran join the nuclear club. President Obama has said similar things, but his word is totally unreliable and everyone in the Middle East knows it.

He may have thought he was earning brownie points by being abusive to Israel, but all he managed to do was raise questions about his treatment of a U.S. ally. It is no secret either that Obama has long associated with notorious anti-Semites such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan.

There’s never been a whole lot of trust among the leaders of Middle Eastern and North African nations for one another, but there is likely none so far as the U.S. President is concerned.

This is why it is the Saudis have been quietly breaking bread with the Israelis for quite a while and a coalition of sorts exists to support whatever it intends to do to render parts of Iran radioactive. This is not to say that U.S. military and intelligence representatives haven’t held similar discussions with the various parties.

An extraordinary flotilla of U.S. war ships has been building up in the Persian Gulf and there no doubt there are other preparations for war occurring. One can only hope that overt U.S. policy towards Israel is a gigantic deception to make the Iranians think the U.S. will stay out of the fight.

As with Munich in 1938 when the momentum toward war was already too strong and too obvious to all of Europe and the rest of the world to ignore, the Iranian regime is begging for war. It will get it. There is simply no way to use diplomacy when you are negotiating with crazy people.

© Alan Caruba, 2010