Max Boot points out that appeasement is nothing new...and still doesn't work.

In his L.A. times op-ed piece, Max Boot points out the obvious--well, what seems to be obvious to people who believe in looking at things through the light of history rather than the dubious light of ideology or the silly light of trying desperately not to offend anybody by saying that all people just want to feel good/understood/accepted/etc.:

Appeasement did not end with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Even afterward, many in Britain (and even more in the U.S.) opposed active resistance. Conservative worthies like Lord Halifax sought a negotiated settlement. Fascists like Sir Oswald Mosley sought to bring Nazism to Britain. And communists and their fellow travelers opposed fighting Stalin's ally until Hitler invaded Russia.

It is evident to me that even in America, even after Pearl Harbor made us realize we were no longer insulated from the war or reprisal, there were people like these who believed that any war was much worse than a war fought to repel facism. As the old saying goes, if we don't learn our history, we are doomed to repeat it. The immediate question then becomes this: what are we learning instead of our history? Multi-culturalism? Revisionist studies? Our semi-intelligentsia run into the same problem that George Orwell observed, as Max Boot continues:

Even in January 1942, when German armies were at the gates of Moscow, George Orwell wrote in Partisan Review that "the greater part of the very young intelligentsia are anti-war … don't believe in any 'defense of democracy,' are inclined to prefer Germany to Britain, and don't feel the horror of Fascism that we who are somewhat older feel."
As if to illustrate Orwell's point, a pacifist poet named D.S. Savage wrote a reply in which he explained why he "would never fight and kill for such a phantasm" as "Britain's 'democracy.' " Savage saw no difference between Britain and its enemies because under the demands of war both were imposing totalitarianism: "Germans call it National Socialism. We call it democracy. The result is the same."

Surely they jested. Surely they knew that there was a cognitive, measurable distance. But then again, if in our modern world elected Congress-critters from the USA can't tell their gulag from a hole in the ground, why should we blame our young intelligentsia, who are just following their leaders? As Boot reports:

When applied to the embodiment of pure evil, the usual liberal tropes about "understanding" not "condemnation" have an air of Monty Python about them. Yet there are uncomfortable echoes of Savage's sermonizing in the attitude of many modern-day intellectuals toward the Islamo-fascist threat.

Ok, just how do we sit down and understand people who blow up children, and civilians? Usually, of course, what the (inevitably) leftists mean when they talk about such things is gazing into the mirror of themselves. And while we are navel gazing, who will watch our backs while these degenerate humans plant more bombs? "Wait," we cry, "we haven't understood you or your needs yet, but we do know that it was our faul----"

The BBC now refuses to refer to the London terrorists as "terrorists." They are to be known by the more neutral term "bombers," lest the public be deceived by "the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Value judgments about blowing up innocent commuters? How gauche!

Enlightened opinion ranging from Amnesty International to Dick Durbin joins in this moral relativism by suggesting that the United States has become no better than its enemies through the actions it has taken to prevent terrorism. Just as 1940s pacifists could see no difference between Nazi concentration camps and British wartime curtailments of civil liberties, so today's doppelgangers equate the abuses of renegade guards at Abu Ghraib with the mass murder carried out by Stalin or Pol Pot.

Moral relativism--intellectual posturing rather than boots on the ground. The solution to every problem lies in impressing people to death with our mental calisthenics.

There is also an enduring tendency to blame the victim. George Galloway, Saddam Hussein's favorite member of Britain's Parliament, suggests that Londoners "paid the price" for their government's "attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq." The implication is that Al Qaeda has reasonable grievances and if only we could satisfy them — by, for instance, exiting Iraq — we would have peace. The same thing was said about Hitler, who complained that Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles.

And this, of course, gave him every excuse to target his own civilians and slaughter them. But again, avoiding war is an admirable goal, and is to be sought at all costs, right?
But then there comes this problem, that Boot mentions:

The problem was that Hitler's stated demands were a pretext for his maniacal ambitions. He was unappeasable. So is Osama bin Laden, who wants to avenge centuries of humiliation supposedly suffered by Muslims at Christian hands and who dreams of establishing a Taliban-style caliphate over all the lands once dominated by Muslims, from western China to southern Spain. Pulling out of Iraq would only whet his insatiable appetite for destruction, just as giving up the Sudetenland encouraged Hitler to seek more.

Orwell's words, written in October 1941, ring true today: "The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality."

It is so easy to criticize the war from so far away, protected by the very acts of violence we abhor and excoriate. "Not in my name!" we cry, as if that absolves us of guilt by association, and will prevent further deaths (including our own). Violence is a last resort--but against violent people who are repeatedly irrational, it is a matter of survival for those who choose violence temporarily in order to preserve a peaceful society to return to later on.