Category: Appeasement (Page 4 of 4)

The Jihad in Canada proceeds unhindered by rude, Islamophobic suspicion. (Thank you Instapundit.)

At Instapundit:

JOE LIEBERMAN ON DEMOCRATS AND OUR ENEMIES. “How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose? … A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned ‘no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.’ This is a lesson that today’s Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.”

Yes indeed.

Cox & Forkum, brilliant as usual, on Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia

(Courtesy of Instapundit)

From global superpower and world cop, America is now recasting itself as feel-good therapist for rogue regimes — seeking to know what’s really on the mind of Kim Jong Il, and ready to break bread with the ayatollahs. It all sounds so civilized.

But I am more worried now than I have been since that clarifying and awful morning of Sept. 11, 2001. While America’s policy may be shifting, the nature of our enemies has not. We are now seeking good-faith deals with governments that rule by terror, and lie and cheat with an impunity that our own leaders cannot afford.

…

[W]ith terror-based governments, regime change remains the only real answer. And if America is now living in a dream world in which there is no war unless we choose to declare it, our best hope remains that these regimes — like the former Soviet Union — will collapse from within. On that score, our real allies are not the tyrants who now deign to haggle with us over “stability” while pursuing weapons of mass murder and supplying roadside bombs to terrorists.

Our natural allies are the people living under such tyrants; people who desire not a false détente while their despots build bombs, but the genuine rights and freedoms that America not so long ago was promising to support.

Bill Whittle is back with another characteristically on-point essay: “Seeing the Unseen, Part 1“:

I cannot think of a single example where appeasement giving in to an aggressive adversary in the hope that it will convince them to become peaceful themselves has provided any lasting peace or security. I can say in complete honesty that I look forward to hearing of any historical example that shows it does.

What I do see are barbarian forces closing in and sacking Rome because the Romans no longer had the will to defend themselves. Payments of tribute to the barbarian hordes only funded the creation of larger and better-armed hordes. The depredations of Viking Raiders throughout Northern Europe produced much in the way of ransom payments. The more ransom that was paid, the more aggressive and warlike the Vikings became. Why? Because it was working, thats why. And why not? Bluster costs nothing. If you can scare a person into giving you his hard-earned wealth, and suffer no loss in return, well then you my friend have hit the Vandal Jackpot. On the other hand, if you are, say, the Barbary Pirates, raiding and looting and having a grand time of it all, and across the world sits a Jefferson you know, Mr. Liberty and Restraint who has decided he has had enough and sends out an actual Navy to track these bastards down and sink them all… well, suddenly raiding and piracy is not such a lucrative occupation. So, contrary to doomsayers throughout history, the destruction of the Barbary Pirates did not result in the recruitment of more Pirates. The destruction of the Barbary Pirates resulted in the destruction of the Barbary Pirates.

And it is just so with terrorism. When the results of terrorism do the terrorist more harm than good, terrorism will go away. We need to harm these terrorists, not reward them, if we ever expect to see the end of them.

As always with Bill’s work, I highly recommend reading the whole thing.