By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I guess it was in high school where I first heard the term the “lessons of Munich.” It has been part of my life from that time on, during my college years and my teaching career. Just about everyone I encountered — colleagues, professors, people in the media — whether on the left or the right, agreed that it was a mistake for the European powers to appease Adolf Hitler and the Nazis by giving in to their demands for control of parts of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference in 1938.
As Winston Churchill phrased it, “Appeasement only feeds the appetite of the aggressor.”
It was the way I taught the story of the outbreak of World War II all through my teaching career. I think everyone on the faculties of the schools where I taught during that 35-year period — one Catholic, one public — did the same; it was the consensus in the academic world.
It is also what informed Dennis Prager’s column on the agreement made between the Obama administration and the government of Iran over Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. Which means I should agree with Prager. But I don’t. So I have some explaining to do.
Prager is convinced that we can’t negotiate with Iran; that we must confront the “evil” of the Iranian regime; that failing to do so will be to make the same mistake of those who “looked the other way” and “denied the darkness of Nazism” when Nazism “could have been stopped.” He is convinced that we are “reliving 1938,” when “British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich” and accepted Adolf Hitler’s “promises of peace in exchange for Germany being allowed to annex large parts of Czechoslovakia.”
Prager points out that the “Nazis’ greatest aim was to exterminate the Jews of Europe,” and that “Iran’s greatest aim is to exterminate the Jewish state. Iran has been proclaiming its intention to annihilate the Jewish state for decades.”
Beyond that, Prager continues, “Iran is the world’s greatest funder of terror organizations,” a fact noted by the “late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman,” who “indicted Iran for establishing terrorist networks throughout Latin America.” Prager concludes that “members of Congress who vote to uphold this agreement will be viewed as Chamberlain is viewed.”
Where do I take issue with Prager? Not with his analysis of Chamberlain at Munich. And not with his observations about the calls for the destruction of Israel emanating from Iran and the Muslim clerics who control the country. The facts are on Prager’s side. But that does not mean I am compelled to agree that negotiating with Iran’s leaders on their nuclear program — whether we are talking about the current agreement negotiated by the Obama administration or some replacement for it in the future — would be in the same category as negotiating with Hitler at Munich. Or that military action against Iran is called for anytime in the near future.
I agree that Prager may be right. But maybe he is not. That’s the point. Because it was a mistake to appease Hitler at Munich, does not mean that we should feel obliged to apply that lesson to Iran. There may be a way to escape a U.S. military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. There are distinctions to be made. While it was a mistake to seek a peaceful accommodation with Hitler, it was not a mistake to refrain from initiating World War III with the Russians and the Chinese. We were able to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and a thaw in our relations with the Chinese without resorting to a “hot” war.
A similar thaw has developed between us and Castro’s Cuba. The Nicaraguan Sandinistas are now a footnote to history. I can’t imagine anyone in our time making the case that it would have been preferable to go to war with Cuba during the height of the Cold War. We may be able to get similar results by dealing patiently with Iran.
The bottom line: Opposing enemies patiently, without resorting to military action, can work. Not all attempts at a peaceful accommodation are appeasement. There is no reason to assume that opposing Iran’s hardliners with the tactics we used against the Soviets and the Communist Chinese will not work. Not yet.
What about the sight of Iranian crowds chanting “Death to America”? It should not deter us from seeking a modus vivendi with the Iranians. There are lines to be drawn here. What mobs scream in the street ought not be confused with expressions of a country’s national will. I wouldn’t want America to be judged by some of the blustering country and western songs you might hear in saloons just before closing time, such as in the Toby Keith song with the line about how “we’ll put a boot up your ***, it’s the American way.”
Most of us would react quickly if someone from another country argued that American slogans such as “making the world safe for democracy” and fighting wars “to end all wars” indicate a deep-seated imperialistic American urge to impose our will upon the rest of the world. We would object that these songs and slogans are expressions of American idealism and not to be taken literally; that they imply no hostile intent toward other countries; that the formation of national policy is a different process from chants and tub-thumping at festive events.
It strikes me that a good number — not all, but a good number — of the Iranians chanting “Death to America” are likely to see things the same way; that they also would insist that their slogans should not be taken literally. They would assure us that they should be seen as an expression of Iranian national pride; that they want us to stop trying to shape their national development, but that they have no desire to plant bombs in Times Square.
Which means there is nothing self-evidently foolish about pushing for an American foreign policy that seeks to give moderate Iranians the necessary time to gain the upper hand in their country, rather than launching bombing raids against their nuclear facilities in an act of preemptive war. Waiting and watching what Iran does over the next few years need not be in the same category as appeasing Hitler. We cannot react to these things in a knee-jerk. Preemptive war is serious business. Making the case for it is a tough row to hoe.
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