[Rhodes22-list] Politics

[brad haslett]

Hello from Mexico.  Still to hot to sail at home but
the weather here at 5000 feet is great!  Forfive me
for raining on your parade but but the world hasn't
quit turning.  As a history buff, it is impossible to
look at current events without an eye on the past. 
Here is a good assessment of the current situation.
Good luck at the airport, happy flying!

Brad




THE MIDEAST'S MUNICH

By ARTHUR HERMAN

August 16, 2006 -- HISTORIANS will look back at this
weekend's cease-fire agreement in Lebanon as a pivotal
moment in the war on terror. It is pivotal in the same
sense that the Munich agreement between Adolf Hitler
and Neville Chamberlain was pivotal in an earlier
battle against the enemies of freedom. The accord in
October 1938 revealed to the world that the solidarity
of the Western allies was a sham, and that the balance
of power had shifted to the fascist dictators.

Resolution 1701 shows that, for the time being at
least, the balance has likewise shifted to the
terrorists and their state sponsors. Like Munich, it
marks the triumph of the principle of putting off
until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Like
Munich, it will mean not peace in our time, but a
bigger war in our future.

In that sense, the cease-fire may be even more
momentous than Munich, and a greater blunder. In 1938
Chamberlain and other appeasers had the excuse that
they were trying to prevent an armed conflict no one
wanted. Today, of course, that conflict is already
here. Historians will conclude that by supporting U.N.
Resolution 1701 and getting Israel to agree, the Bush
administration has in effect declared that its global
war on terror is over. We have reverted to the
pre-9/11 box of tools, if not necessarily the pre-9/11
mindset. From now on, the worst Iran, Syria, and North
Korea will have to worry about are serial resolutions
in the United Nations. Terrorists will be busy dodging
Justice Department subpoenas, not Tomahawk missiles.

Our enemies know better. They know the war is only
entering a new stage, and they know who the winners
and losers were last weekend.

The clear losers were the United States and Israel.
Israel has sacrificed lives and treasure, and had its
honor dragged through the mud of international
opinion, for no purpose. America squandered its
political capital at the start of the crisis by
getting moderate Arab regimes to condemn Hezbollah
instead of Israel. They did so because they thought
Hezbollah was about to be annihilated. However, they
soon realized their mistake. They now know Tehran and
Damascus will set the agenda in the Middle East, not
Washington. The Arab League's support for this
U.N.-brokered deal is just one more measure of our
strategic failure.

The other loser is Lebanon. The price of peace in 1938
was de jure dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, as
Germany annexed the Sudetenland. The price of
Resolution 1701 is de facto dismemberment of Lebanon.
A large, well-armed terrorist army acting at the
behest of a foreign power now controls the southern
half of Lebanon, and pulls the strings in the other
half. The facade of Lebanese self-government has been
preserved. As a territorial state, it may even last
longer than Czechoslovakia did (Hitler gave the Czechs
five months before he annexed the rest of their
country).

But other states in the region will have learned their
lesson. Faced by an internal terrorist organization,
especially one with links with Tehran, they will have
to make accommodations. No white knight in the guise
of U.S. Marines will ride to their rescue; no Israeli
tanks and F-16s will do their dirty work for them.
Appeasement will be the order of the day.

That includes Iraq. The disarming of Sunni and Shia
militias, the necessary first step to ending sectarian
violence there, will be postponed - perhaps for good.
On the contrary, this crisis has taught Iraq's Shia
minority that extremism pays, particularly the Iranian
kind.

For everyone in the Middle East knows Iran is the
clear winner. Only the diplomats and politicians,
including the Bush administration, will pretend
otherwise. Iran has emerged as the clear champion of
anti-Israeli feeling and radical Islam. The Iranians
have their useful puppet in Syria; they have their
proxy armies in place with Hezbollah and Hamas. They
have been able to install missiles, even Revolutionary
Guards, in Lebanon with impunity. Sunni regimes in the
region will move to strike their own deals with Iran,
just as Eastern European states did with Germany after
Czechoslovakia. That includes Iraq; the lesson will
not be lost on Russia and China, either. And all the
while, the Iranians proceed with their nuclear plans -
with the same impunity.

Finally, the other winners are the conventional
diplomats at the State Department, especially
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas
Burns. In a narrow professional sense, appeasement is
their business. They never saw the point to a "war on
terror they are delighted to take back the initiative
from the hawks at the Pentagon and the White House.

The war in Iraq has clearly sapped the moral strength
of the Bush administration. The men of Munich
acquiesced to Hitler because another world war like
the first seemed unthinkable. The Bush administration
clearly feels it cannot face another major
confrontation even with a second-rate power like Iran.
Yet by calling off the war on terror, it has only
postponed that conflict.

"We have passed an awful milestone in our history,"
Winston Churchill said after the Munich agreement was
signed. "Do not suppose this is the end . . . This is
only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter
cup that will be proffered to us year by year."
Despite the failure of appeasement, Churchill still
believed the Western democracies would make the
"supreme recovery" and take up the banner for freedom
again. The United States and the forces of democracy
will recover from this debacle - even with a
Democratic Congress in 2006 and a Democratic president
in 2008. The reason will not be because Bush's
opponents have a better strategy, or a clearer vision,
or even a Winston Churchill waiting in the wings. It
will be because our enemies will give us no choice.

Less than a year after Munich, Nazi panzers rolled
into Poland. Instead of fighting a short, limited war
over Czechoslovakia, the Western democracies ended up
fighting a world war, the most destructive in history.
The war with the mullahs of Iran is coming. It is only
a question of whether it will be at a time or on a
ground of our choosing, or theirs - and whether it is
fought within the shadow of a mushroom cloud.

Arthur Herman is the author most recently of "To Rule
The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern
World." He is completing a book on Churchill and
Gandhi.




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