Why Appeasement Will Work
Sometime in the last few weeks, the worst insult one could leverage on someone opposing the “war on terror” is not to Hitler, but to Neville Chamberlain. The implication seems to be that appeasing “terror groups” [Hezbollah] or “terror states” [Iran] will lead to the creation of a dictatorship that threatens the security of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Let’s begin with the obvious: Iran 2006 is not Germany 1938. Germany in 1938 was the dominant military force in Europe, and had ambitions of actively expanding its territory. The world had recently ended a horrific and fruitless war, and no country had a desire to enter into another conflict. Neville Chamberlain’s action was short sighted, given the overall strength and ambition of the Germans.
The war hawks in the US government argue that if Iran were to be appeased, allowing them to gain access to nuclear weapons, the peace and security of the United States will be directly threatened.
Today, we must debate what to do about Iran. Given our illustrious history with the country, it seems that trying to reform the government is not the appropriate decision. From a technical standpoint, Iran is several years away from even having the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the way that our government describes the terrorist threat is more like something form a “James Bond” movie than how it really operates. Iranian opposition to the United States is largely based upon our operations in the Middle East. By changing our policies in the Middle East such that we have limited contact in the area, we could do more to improve our own peace and security than deploying an additional 135,000 troops to the region. If we have learned anything from the invasion of Iraq, it is that a stable dictatorship is more peaceful than an unstable “democracy”; after all, the US record for imposing democracy is worse than the win/loss record of the Washington Nationals.
In the end, we need not worry about Iran. Sure, they hate the United States. They hate Israel. But Iran is no Germany. We should be working to promote actual peace and security through diplomacy, not through the military.
