Naive appeasement

Victor Davis Hanson asks at National Review,

In a system of closed borders, immediate and permanent deportation for criminal activity, and no sanctuary cities, would the illegal immigrant have more or less respect for his hosts?

Then we come to Iran. Does Supreme Leader Khamenei tone down his anti-American rhetoric — unwise though such rhetoric may seem in the midst of heated debates over the wisdom of President Obama’s negotiations — when the United States offers concessions on continued enrichment and centrifuges, or backs off from snap-back sanctions and anywhere/anytime inspections? If the U.S. Congress should defeat the treaty, reinstate even tougher sanctions, organize another global boycott, and warn the Iranians that they will be held accountable for their terrorist operatives, would Iranian theocrats keep chanting “Death to America” in their legislative chambers and press ahead with enrichment as they wink and nod to their allies about nuclear proliferation?

The trait is not quite ingratitude so much as it is gratuitous derision. It all reminds me of 1980, when the ingratiating Jimmy Carter (remember the aborted appeasement mission of Ramsey Clark, and Andy Young’s blessing of Khomeini as a probable “saint”?) was slandered as satanic by the Iranian hostage-takers, while President-elect Ronald Reagan was met with silence and released hostages.

The Castro brothers just upped their rhetoric, as Fidel demanded millions of dollars in embargo reparations as part of President Obama’s “normalization” of relations with Cuba — apparently to remind the world that the Cubans have no intention of paying back the billions of dollars they confiscated 55 years ago in American capital and property, much less of easing up on human-rights activists. Why would the Castros do that at this point, when no American president in a half-century has been more deferential to their Stalinist government?

Why did Putin react to Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s obsequious reset with invasions of his smaller neighbors? Is the U.S. popular in Libya for removing the hated Qaddafi? Do the Palestinians appreciate stepped-up foreign aid to them and American pressure on Israel? Why did ISIS swallow Iraq immediately following our departure, when we had been told ad nauseam in the 2008 campaign that our foreign presence there was an irritant and a radicalizing force among the peoples of the Middle East?

The answer is something more than just the obvious: that naïve appeasement is more dangerous than wise deterrence, or that the sober advice to keep quiet and carry a large stick trumps sounding off while wielding a toothpick.

...Obama’s misreading of human nature has proverbially sown the wind, and the whirlwind is upon us.

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Kerry and Obama: Naivete, vanity, and foolishness

Historian Victor Davis Hanson compares Hitler's Nazi Germany with today's Iran. Hitler sized up the fecklessness, and lack of cohesion of his enemies and then went on his killing spree across Europe.

In every regard, Hitler brilliantly judged the appeasing mentalities of his far more powerful enemies. Only a horrific war restored a grim reality to Hitler’s Nazis. By late 1943 the Third Reich had been brutally reminded that Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States really were far more powerful than Germany all along.

Iran now de facto runs Lebanon. It props up what is increasingly a puppet state in Syria and all but controls Iraq, while attempting to take over Yemen and erode Sunni authority in the Gulf. The regional Sunni states — including Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, Turkey, and Pakistan — together are collectively far stronger than Iran. But like the Western democracies and their eastern allies in 1938, each nation apparently prefers, in the paraphrase of Churchill, to be eaten last by the crocodile, and thereby eschews collective forceful deterrent action.

...Iran is as militarily weak as was the 1938 Third Reich. But like Hitler’s Germany, Iran fancies that its ardor and brinkmanship constitute military assets far more valuable than mere carriers or planes. Like Hitler, the theocracy believes loud bluster and perhaps even feigned insanity offer real advantages against those who are sober, judicious, and intent on avoiding the use of force at all costs. Are “Death to America” and constant threats from Teheran — even as negotiations of the non-proliferation deal were still fluid — all that much different from Hitler’s scoffing that his interlocutors at Munich were “worms”? Acting as if one has nothing to lose is advantageous in geostrategic poker.

...The danger of an aggressor is never just the specter of raw power, but instead the insidious messages about using what it has that it sends to more responsible parties. Once Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier backed down at Munich, the Soviets concluded that friendship with Western democracies was as dangerous as enmity to Hitler, and thus flipped their affinities. Other opportunistic Eastern European nations soon realigned with Hitler. So-called neutrals like fair-weather Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey conducted lucrative trade deals with Hitler and made the necessary adjustments to fit what they saw as an ascendant Third Reich. If the Iranian deal goes through, and if it is perceived as an economic, political, and military boon to the theocracy, then the surrounding and terrified Middle East will likely make the necessary political modifications to allow for Iranian expansionism.

...The appeasers always pose as peace-makers and caricature their skeptics as near troglodyte war-mongers.

Today we see a Munich-like arrogance that men of assumed reason and sobriety, by their winning charisma, rare mellifluence, or superior wisdom, can convince Khamenei of the errors of his ways. Western humanists habitually preen that they can demonstrate to authoritarians why their bellicosity is supposedly against their own self interests — as if autocratic aggressors envision risking war, and shorting their own people, as unimaginable evils in comparison with the acquisition of honor, glory and respect that follows from easily bullying neighbors and successfully gobbling up real estate. John Kerry believes that the bomb is not in Iran’s real interest; Iran believes that so far even the idea of a bomb most certainly has proved very much in Iran’s interest.

...While John Kerry ignored the long-term security of Israel and the Sunni states in the Middle East, Vladimir Putin had earlier demonstrated that Ossetia led to the Crimea that led to Eastern Ukraine that may well soon lead to the Baltic states. Failed reset no more wised up John Kerry than Abyssinia or Manchuria had enlightened Neville Chamberlain. Munich’s 1938 hype led to catastrophe in 1939, in a way that the current 2015 self-congratulation may well become frightening in 2016.

The Iran deal is not Munich, but the same naiveté, vanity, and foolishness of Western leaders are close enough to warn us about what happens next. And it will not be good.

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Khameni rational?

In the Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens analyzes Obama's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic.

Whether the Ayatollah Khamenei gets to act on his wishes, as Eichmann did, is another question. Mr. Obama thinks he won’t, because the ayatollah only pursues his Jew-hating hobby “at the margins,” as he told Mr. Goldberg, where it isn’t at the expense of his “self-interest.” Does it occur to Mr. Obama that Mr. Khamenei might operate according to a different set of principles than political or economic self-interest? What if Mr. Khamenei believes that some things in life are, in fact, worth fighting for, the elimination of Zionism above all?

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Choosing to cuddle up to a mortal enemy of America

Michael Ledeen is curious about the fact that so many pundits are wondering why Obama is cuddling up to Khamenei, offering to ease up on our negotiations if Iran will join the fight against the Islamic State. He notes that it has been well documented that Obama has been cuddling now for six years.

Instead of focusing their considerable energies on the letter, the pols and pundits should try to solve the mystery: why has Obama always wanted an alliance with Iran? Moreover, whatever the explanation, the president’s Iranian mission gravely distorts American policy and puts American lives on the line in favor of the objectives of a mortal enemy. That’s infuriatingly more important than yet another letter to Khamenei, even more important than whatever agreement may or may not emerge from the negotiationathon in Vienna.

There should have been Congressional hearings on this very important subject long since, and the so-called investigative journalists have had years to unscrew the administration’s appalling behavior. Valerie Jarrett is deeply involved, along with now-retired Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan. Are they unreachable? Are their colleagues’ lips sealed, even now? Or will our deep thinkers and elected representatives just focus like a laser on the letter, and studiously ignore one of the central compulsions of our commander-in-chief?

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