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Almost all of these items, sad to say, denounce the firm of Scowcroft, Hagel, and Raines for their warnings that President George W. Bush's presumed invasion of Iraq is rash adventurism inviting disaster. And they cruelly denounce the trio as heirs and successors to the Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister 1937-40, timorous appeaser of Hitler, and byword for pusillanimity and strategic dimwittedness. So let me be the first to say it: This is grossly and unforgivably unfair. To Neville Chamberlain. It is generally argued that Chamberlain's great failure was his agreement to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany at the Munich conference in 1938. Even if we accept this general verdict, however, we must accept that Chamberlain had strong and persuasive reasons for not going to war over the Sudetenland in 1938. In no particular order, they were as follows: 1. The British rearmament program, begun in 1934, had not yet restored the nation's armed forces to the strength levels that would have been needed to take on Nazi Germany with reasonable confidence of victory. 2. Senior British military advisers were against a war — preferring to wait until 1942 when they believed, rightly or wrongly, that the balance of military advantage would have shifted in Britain's favor. 3. The British empire was threatened not simply by Germany in the West but also by Japan in the East — as was demonstrated all too vividly in 1941 when the Japanese overran Britain's Asian colonies simultaneously with their attack on Pearl Harbor. 4. Britain had no reliable allies in 1938. The French were even more reluctant to wage another Great War than the British; the U.S. held aloof from "European quarrels" (Roosevelt sending Chamberlain a telegram of congratulations on Munich); the Soviets were a dangerous revolutionary enigma; and the independent British Dominions like Canada and Australia were not disposed to fight for a Czechoslovakia that was even more of a "faraway country" to them than it was to Chamberlain. Two years later, in part because Hitler's true character had been unmistakably revealed when he broke his promise given at Munich and seized Prague, the Dominions rallied to Britain on the outbreak of war, the Poles fought from Day One, the U.S. came to Britain's aid with Lend-Lease in 1940, and after the defeats of 1940 the French in the person of De Gaulle continued the battle from their British redoubt. Only the Soviets continued to justify Chamberlain's suspicions by siding with the Nazi Germany in the dismemberment of Poland. 5. And, finally, in signing onto Munich Chamberlain broke no British pledge to defend Czechoslovakia. France, not Britain, had given that pledge. And when Chamberlain did guarantee Poland's borders six months later, he redeemed that pledge fully by declaring war on Germany in September 1939 following Hitler's invasion of that country two days before. Now, some of the above arguments can be contested. Some historians maintain, for instance, that Germany rearmed even faster than Britain in the year after Munich. But my argument is not that Chamberlain acted rightly but that he acted reasonably. His appeasement was hardheaded, based on rational calculations, and quite divorced from any general notions of feebleness, cowardice, or strategic idiocy. Let us now compare the appeasement of Hitler with the appeasement of Saddam Hussein: 1. America may need to rearm if Mr. Bush wants to fight several wars at once. But we are perfectly capable of taking on Saddam Hussein with our present level of forces. That is not to deny that the U.S. might suffer serious casualties — nothing is certain in war. But a defeat at the hands of Iraq can be fairly plausibly ruled out. Hitler and Saddam may be moral equals, but Hitler in 1938 was a far greater threat to Britain than Saddam today is to the U.S., to Europe, or to his neighbors. 2. Whereas Hitler was not growing stronger relative to his neighbors in 1938 (or at most was gaining a little relative ground), Saddam will almost certainly obtain weapons of mass destruction in the next few years. That would be, ahem, a quantum leap in the threat he poses. 3. America is threatened by terrorism and might conceivably lose hundreds of thousands of citizens in a terrorist attack using WMDs. It is well worth taking precautions against such a possibility. But we are not seriously menaced by even one major power, let alone by two, as Britain was in 1938. 4. Though Americans frequently complain that they have no reliable allies, Britain, Australia, Italy, Turkey, and Israel are all allies in this battle — and even the much-abused French have indicated that they will join in an attack on Iraq if the U.N. Security Council votes for one. 5.And, finally, the president of the United States has several times made absolutely plain that he intends to obtain "regime change" in Iraq. If he stops short of that, or interprets some minor game of musical chairs in the Iraqi cabinet as "regime change," he will become a despised figure and the U.S. will persuade the terrorists that, even despite Afghanistan, it is a paper tiger after all. Compare and contrast. Look upon this picture and on this. And if Mr. Bush. does not replace Saddam with a new and potentially democratic regime, then the U.S. Senate should pass a motion to apologize to the memory of Neville Chamberlain for all the unkind things that American politicians, journalists, and historians have said about him since — well, since the Spring of 1940 when France and he fell together. Perhaps Senator Hagel would like to propose the motion with one of his famously "thoughtful" speeches. — John O'Sullivan is an editor-at-large of National Review. Parts of this essay originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. |
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you have access to a search engine, if you type in "Neville Chamberlain"
plus such names as former national-security adviser to the first President
Bush, General Brent Scowcroft, or Republican wannabee statesman, Senator
Chuck Hagel, or the executive editor of the New York Times, Howell
Raines Esq., or any other names of those expressing doubt, disquiet, or
denial over a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and if you finally press the "find"
button, a galaxy of items will burst forth. 
