Winston Churchill and the Iran War
As I listen to the talking heads and media analysts attack President Donald J. Trump over Iran, I wonder if any of them have ever read Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s continuous warnings about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi threat.
There is a real parallel between the timidity and appeasement mentality of the British elites in the 1930s and the constant desire for a supposedly reasonable and peaceful solution to the Iranian religious dictatorship’s threat to destroy us.
As an historian, I am amazed at the lack of seriousness of many of our smartest people. Some of them say things as though they are Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”
Somehow the 47-year history of the Iranian dictatorship chanting “Death to America” has no meaning for them.
The seizure of our diplomats in 1979 and their 444-day illegal imprisonment was apparently a minor infraction.
The Iranian direction and support for killing 240 Marines, 21 other Americans, and 58 French troops in 1983 in Beirut means nothing to them (it was the largest single-day loss for Marines since Iwo Jima).
Iran’s continued effort to get bigger and better missiles to reach Europe is irrelevant to the America’s pro-irrational peace elite.
Somehow the relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons despite agreements, sanctions, and even bombing campaigns means nothing.
A ruthless dictatorship — which may have killed more than 47,000 of its own citizens in the first three months of this year — can be reasoned with apparently.
Churchill was faced with a similar willful ignorance in the 1930s. He had read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” when it came out in English. He instinctively understood that Britain was in mortal danger.
As early as 1936, Churchill warned that “Germany is arming fast… No one can say that they are not doing exactly what they have said they would do.”
The British governing elite of course did not read “Mein Kampf,” did not want to take Hitler as a serious threat, and did not want to take the steps necessary to stop him. They kept shrugging off Hitler’s clear speeches as though they had no meaning.
By 1937, Churchill warned “when I listen to what Herr Hitler says… I cannot feel that we are safe in treating these declarations as idle.”
Churchill went on to warn that “the era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
Even before the Allies gathered to try to appease Hitler, Churchill warned: “The dictators are not looking for concessions… they are looking for weakness.”
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich to offer Hitler part of Czechoslovakia in the hope that it would satisfy his demands, Churchill understood that the agreement was a disaster. He said “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”
Giving in to aggressive tyrants inevitably increases their appetite and boldness. They constantly take the measure of the people who refuse to stand up to them. Churchill understood this and warned, “so far from having its hand forced, Germany has been encouraged… We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.”
Churchill also understood that delaying the war would make it much worse.
Finally, in 1939 as war loomed and seemed unavoidable Churchill set the right standard for fighting a war: “There is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
President Trump’s clarity on the Iranian dictatorship has a long pedigree. In an October 1980 TV interview he said, “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages …is a horror.”
For 46 years, President Trump has understood that the Iranian government is our mortal enemy.
He is now at the crossroads. He can accept the Churchill principle of doing what is necessary or he can concede an “unmitigated defeat” to the Iranian dictatorship. If Iran comes out of this war controlling the Strait of Hormuz, it will have leverage over the entire world market and revenue on a scale it could never have imagined. With that it will be able to turn to its two allies, Russia and Communist China and rapidly rebuild its missile and nuclear programs. There are some reports there are already ships landing in Iran with chemical precursors for solid fuel rockets from China.
We are not in a risk-free exercise.
In the Churchillian tradition, we must win or face an even greater danger in the near future.
There is no middle ground except in the fevered fantasies of elites who are desperate to avoid risk and willing to hide from reality.
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“They constantly take the measure of the people who refuse to stand up to them.” You captured in this short deft sentence the mindset of the Iranian dictatorship of psychotic butchers. And every democrat since Carter -and a few republican presidents-ignored the truth in front of them, playing Neville Chamberlain to the Iranian Hitlerian threat before them. Trump is clear-eyed and takes them at their word, as right now they continue to try to massacre innocents, using their countrymen as human shields. Even as the good Iranians beg Trump to finish off the mullahs that have been holding them hostage for 50 years! Those who ignore history do so at not only their peril, but the entire planet’s in this case!
I vote to follow Churchill's wisdom. So glad to read your comments.