Is history repeating itself?
Editor,
I shall be 90 years old in a few months and therefore can say with certainty that history repeats itself — and those who ignore it will live to regret it.
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the first volume in 1922, detailing his plan for Germany should he ever attain power. The book was largely ignored, even by diplomats in Europe who said it was just the meanderings of a crazy person. Britain was then the supreme power in the world, and even though Hitler was gradually attaining more power, their diplomats assured the nation that he was no threat.
Same attitude in France. But there was one member of parliament in England who did not write off Hitler, and his calls for a bigger army, air force and navy were ignored, and he was relegated to the wilderness of the British conservation party. This man was Winston Churchill.
In the meantime, all Europe was relaxed, partying, doing their own thing while Hitler was building up his party and eventually became Chancellor. Then he increased his army, air force and navy to monumental proportions compared to the rest of Europe. He walked into Alsace Lorraine, a French possession, without so much as a shot being fired. Then he went into Austria and took over. No shots fired. Then he went into Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia, but received some objections.
Neville Chamberlain and the French premier had a talk with Hitler and Chamberlain came home to England to cheering crowds, holding a piece of paper aloft, claiming that Hitler had made his last demands in Europe. A few days later, Hitler sent his tanks across the border into Poland, his Stukas into the air, and the second world war started … All this was due to appeasement of the jack-booted, goose-stepping thugs of the Nazi party by the British and French politicians, who could have stopped Hitler at his beginning.
Now we have Islamic Fascism, whose stated goal is world domination. We see their jackbooted soldiers on parade in Iran, in North Korea. We see rockets fired into Israel and we see threats to the people in the USA. What are we doing about these threats in Congress? We see members fighting with one another, like kids … about trivialities, and impeding our intelligence services over listening to phone calls without a judge's permission. We see them objecting to the war in Iraq as being unnecessary, while approving the war in Afghanistan.
I wonder why any general worth his salt would leave his rear exposed to a dictator who had already started a war with Iran, and poisoned a thousand Kurdish men, women and children — and murdered thousands of his own people. I was under the impression that in the Nuremberg trials, the League of Nations stated that such pogroms as occurred in Germany must not be repeated. And yet we got Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Sarajevo, where thousands were murdered by a Serbian dictator who was allowed to get his way but was eventually stopped by U.S. forces. Europe, as usual, was inert except for the Brits. Margaret Thatcher was all for bombing the bridges on the Danube, which surrounded Serbia but she was shouted down by the appeasers.
The United Nations is not a competent organization to look to for help; witness Darfur, Rwanda, and Idi Amin in Uganda, who slaughtered thousands of his people and found a nice safe haven in Saudi Arabia. So far the UN has not been very effective in enforcing their rules against the Hezbollah militias in Lebanon, who were supposed to disarm by order of the UN.
It is time for our people get behind our president and not impede him by putting all these restrictions, which are of no moment compared to the problems he has to face daily. The actions of Iran and statements made and attempts to obtain nuclear weapons, and to aid terrorist organizations in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan too similar to the actions of the Nazi party to be ignored.
Thomas A. O'Halloran
Polson