"Europe, Thy Name is Cowardice"

[Beer in The Evening?]

The writer Henryk Broder recently issued a withering indictment: ?Europe, your family name is Appeasement.? That phrase resonates because it is so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they realized that Hitler needed to be fought and defeated, because he could not be bound by toothless agreements.

Later, appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, where for decades inhuman, repressive, and murderous governments were glorified.

Appeasement similarly crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Bosnia and Kosovo. Indeed, even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass murder there, we Europeans debated and debated, and then debated still more. We were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, to do our work for us.

Europe still hasn?t learned its lesson. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word ?equidistance,? often seems to countenance suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Similarly, it generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore the nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam?s torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, to harangue George W. Bush as a warmonger.

This hypocrisy continues even as it is discovered that some of the loudest critics of American action in Iraq made illicit billions ? indeed, tens of billions ? of dollars in the corrupt UN ?oil-for-food? program.

Today we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland, Britain, and elsewhere in Europe? By suggesting ? wait for it ? that the proper response to such barbarism is to initiate a ?Muslim holiday? in Germany.

I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of Germany?s government ? and, if polls are to be believed, the German people ? actually believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists. One cannot help but recall Britain?s Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich, waving that laughable treaty signed by Adolf Hitler, and declaring the advent of ?peace in our time.?

What atrocity must occur before the European public and its political leadership understands what is really happening in the world? There is a sort of crusade underway ? an especially perfidious campaign consisting of systematic attacks by Islamists, focused on civilians, that is directed against our free, open Western societies, and that is intent upon their utter destruction.

We find ourselves faced with a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military clashes of the last century ? a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by ?tolerance? and ?accommodation? because that enemy is actually spurred on by such gestures. Such responses have proven to be signs of weakness, and they will always be regarded as such by the Islamists.

Only two recent American presidents have had the courage needed to shun appeasement: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. America?s critics may quibble over the details, but in our hearts we Europeans know the truth, because we saw it first hand. Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of Europe from nearly 50 years of terror and slavery. And President Bush, acting out of moral conviction and supported only by the social democrat Tony Blair, recognized the danger in today?s Islamist war against democracy.

In the meantime, Europe sits back in the multi-cultural corner with its usual blithe self-confidence. Instead of defending liberal values and acting as an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China, it does nothing. On the contrary, we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to the supposedly ?arrogant Americans,? as world champions of ?tolerance,? which even Germany?s interior minister, Otto Schily, justifiably criticizes.

Where does this self-satisfied reaction come from? Does it arise because we are so moral?

I fear that it stems from the fact that we Europeans are so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass. For his policy of confronting Islamic terrorism head on, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy. But he does this because, unlike most of Europe, he realizes that what is at stake is literally everything that really matters to free people.

While we criticize the ?capitalistic robber barons? of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our welfare states. ?Stay out of it! It could get expensive,? we cry. So, instead of acting to defend our civilization, we prefer to discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or improving our dental coverage, or extending our four weeks of annual paid vacation. Or perhaps we listen to television pastors preach about the need to ?reach out to terrorists,? to understand and forgive.

These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor?s house. Appeasement? That is just the start of it. Europe, thy name is Cowardice.

Source: Matius Doepfner - http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/europe--thy-name-is-cowardice

[maxxi]

Howling at the moon...

[woodrot]

I am now scared of the islam menace

[El Pibe]

Possibly the greatest concentration of misinformation a truth twisting ever committed to prose.

BITE, do us all a favour and fuck off.

[Loz]

I am not reading all that crap. Can anyone summarise it in 20 words or less?

[Beer in The Evening?]

@ EP

Please, try not to be such a liberal queef and explain how what Doepfner wrote is "the greatest concentration of misinformation a truth twisting ever committed to prose" without resorting to name-calling, which, as I'm sure you already know, is the first sign of a liberal losing the argument.

[El Pibe]

Ha ha ha.

[El Pibe]

Ok if you're going to make me Fisk it I'll do it a bit at a time.

Para one.

Appeasement didn't cost the lives of anyone.

Nazi aggression and genocidal policies did.

Western leaders were not appeasing Hitler, this was a criticism of policy arrived at with the huge benefit of hindsight and typically cited (usually ridiculously innappropriately, see above) by hawks keen for bloodshed.

Western leaders were, quite rightly and understandably trying to avoid a rehash of world war one, fresh within living memory.

Everyone said never again and any attempts at pursuing that we're noble, if sadly forlorn.

Of course it was during this period of 'appeasement' that a massive program of rearmament and expansion of the armed forces took place in preparation for war, Walk softly and carry a big stick eh?

Who knows how early intervention may have gone, perhaps it would have checked initial expansion. But it would have been limited war with limited aims, more a spat over the Rhineland or even a 'police action'. Perhaps it would have caused the nazis to a coalesce their policies regarding the Jews earlier as they'd have quickly worked out that remilitarising the Rhineland may have been a line in the sand but internal suppression of 'enemies of the state' is not a concern of foreign powers.

So perhaps a more hawkish stance would have brought about a more complete destruction of European Jewry and delayed aggressive expansion until the Wehrmacht was more fully prepared, thus invading Poland with an efficient death camp network and ovens already in place.

Of course the war killed upwards of 50 million people, mostly Chinese, Soviets and Germans, but I'm loving this chaps immediate concern for Jews. He might as well have written "yes I'm about to label an entire ethno-religious grouping an internal enemy of the state in a bid to whip up fear for my own political ends, but I'm not like others who do it, look at me I'm concerned for the Jews, that makes me not a racist bloodthirsty bigot, right?".

He can fuck off and so can you if you peddle this xenophobic bullshit.

I'll pick apart his risible understanding of the post-war carve up next, as for Bosnia, moral cowardice perhaps, but it had nothing to do with appeasement, but then this chap knows all about moral cowardice doesn't he.

[Annette Curtain]

woodrot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I am now scared of the islam menace

I'm scareder than you

Thanks Lawrence

You've really put the cat cat amongst the pidgins

[El Pibe]

Eastern Europe, I'd like you to explain to me how anything that happened there amounted to appeasement.

The Potsdam agreement was simply an acknowledgement of the facts on the ground, that being that a devastatingly effective fighting force of over 11 million men were in control.

What are you suggesting the western powers should have done, given they had electorates overjoyed at peace after six years of warfare that killed hundreds of thousands of their men and cripppled their economies, with disintegrating empires*. The British government had been handed a mandate for social justice and the French were simply trying to put together a political framework to function as a country again, hardly great starting points for another total war.

This bloodthirsty idiot is saying we should have kicked off a war that could have killed millions more to try to move the western sphere of influence over an area it had never had much clout in anyway?

I've no idea who was glorifying the communist states, but it's a bit rich to talk about how the west should have been doing its utmost to stymie or topple repressive regimes given how many of themn we installed and or supported. Doubly ironic given his uncritical support of Israel and equation of any criticism of Israel's murderous policies with anti-semitism whilst simultaneously conflating the rhetoric of a few individuals with the desires of the entire muslim populace of Europe.

He's a demagogue, a disingenuous rhetorician and a tw@t.

*well, France and Britain, the US was just about to embark on building a new one.

[El Pibe]

"Please, try not to be such a liberal queef(sic)"

Setting aside your casual homophobia for a second, it's interesting that Mathias D?pfner who penned your editorial considers himself a liberal, though doubtless a muscular one.

Of course he advocates defending our freedoms by coming up with some sort of solution for the islamic problem, as a German I would have thought him a little more sensitive to history, but then given his complete lack of understanding of history I'm hardly surprised.

[Chippy Minton]

Blimey Beer in The Evening, first aid to India, then racism and now Europe.

Heavy.

Can't you just tell me where serves the best ale on the Lane?

[El Pibe]

BITE's finest hour

http://www.beerintheevening.com/user_comments.shtml?username=snorky

[red devil]

I think the Forum could be haunted, when you click on BITE's posting history, there's nothing...oooooohhhhh, spooky!

[LondonLogCo]

OMG

[Huguenot]

Is BITE Snorky?

Surely not?

[El Pibe]

Oh god no, that wasn't my point!!!

Just reminding myself of snorky's BITE reviews.

Not sure who BITE is, though there's a whiff of a few past bigots on here, I suspect it's just any old common or garden chap who sits somewhere on the depressing sliding scale from UKIP -> EDL.

ANd for the record I'm pretty sure BITE (the site not the user) would be pretty upset at having their views expressed by this man and would take issue with the EDF if they found out.

For that alone I suspect a ban is forthcoming, so I really shouldn't have bothered with lengthy refutations as hiding the first message will cause the rest of the thread to dissappear in a puff of smoke.