Does Any of This Sound
Familiar?
On the weekend of
September 29-30, 1938, two events very significant to my life were taking
place. One was that a young woman was having a baby. The second was that the
prime minister of Great Britain was in Munich agreeing that the leader of a
fanatical, tyrannical regime should be allowed to have Czechoslovakia, a
country nobody seemed to care about and whose name they couldn't spell. Mr.
Chamberlain returned to London (reputedly waving his famous umbrella) to
announce that negotiations had triumphed. Mr. Hitler had agreed that we had
given him the last thing he would ever demand, and thus we would have
"peace in our time."
The great
Western democracies were convinced that negotiation was the civilized course,
and that war was both terrible and absolutely unnecessary. The dictator, as we
now know, kept right on building his nation's military capability, secretly
continuing to break the treaty imposed at the end of a previous war. Then, a
year later, on his own timetable, he caught us by surprise and launched
military action that England and France had to answer. The Western democracies
had been honoring and depending on the existing treaty. Their populations had
been listening to the constant drum beat from the news media that negotiations
would prevail and that the dictator "had a valid point of view that we
should understand." A series of acts of war by the dictator were ignored,
because they were not sufficiently relevant or significant to us. Thus, our
preparations for the war that followed did not build any momentum until after
the dictator finally made the attack that could not be ignored. The result was
that millions of lives were violently ended - and the aforementioned baby had
several school friends who didn't understand why "Daddy can't come home
anymore."
Does this
sound familiar?
The dictator
had made the mistake of confusing the compassion and love of peace in the
Western democracies with weakness. He and the people of the nation he held in
an "iron fist" paid a terrible price for that mistake. However,
because they were not prepared to strike a quick and decisive blow against an
adversary who was allowed to control the timetable, the people of the Western
democracies also paid a terrible price.
Two years and
two months later, another fanatical, tyrannical regime mistook compassion and
the love of peace in the Western democracies for weakness and mounted a massive
surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor while negotiation was
proceeding to solve the problem. The aforementioned baby was then a
two-year-old looking forward to Christmas, not understanding the dramatic way
that "day that will live in infamy" would change the world. Again,
the attacking power did not comprehend the steel beneath the compassion and
love of peace of free people and paid a terrible price.
Does this
sound familiar?
Eighty-seven
days short of 60 years after the day of infamy, that baby, now a grandfather of
six, was awakened by a daughter living in an earlier time zone to learn that a
plane had hit the World Trade Center. Watching a second plane hit and learning
about a third hitting the Pentagon and a fourth being diverted through heroic
and fatal resistance by the passengers, that baby-turned-grandfather knew that
once again a fanatical, tyrannical regime had been allowed to mistake
compassion and the love of peace for weakness. This time, he knew that the
result had to be a long and hard war, and he was sick with worry about what the
effect of that war would be on his grandchildren.
Now, a year
after the second day of infamy, the Western democracies are listening to a drum
beat from the media. A fanatical, tyrannical dictator who has been defying a
treaty imposed after a previous war needs to be dealt with in a civilized way
through negotiation and has a valid point of view that we should understand -
while he apparently continues building his military capability. Negotiations
will prevail, so we are apparently ready to let the dictator control the
timetable of events.
Does any of
this sound familiar?