The_Jaded_One and other liberals on this board may want to give my comments a pass because, unlike them, I'm not a liberal, and therefore have a poor grasp of stuff that I don't know anything about. So, here goes:
Spaniards have chosen to take the side of neutrality when there was a gun to their head - a naturally human, but strategically unwise, choice, as readers of history will understand.
Appeasement is one of the calling cards of the “root cause” crowd. However, as proven time and again, appeasement never works – rather, it simply delays the inevitable. One of the 20th century’s more famous (infamous?) appeasers was British PM Neville Chamberlain. I suggest the board’s liberals read up on Neville’s record – it’s pretty disgraceful; World War II may have been significantly less destructive (even avoidable) had Chamberlain given Hitler the correct signals at Munich in 1938.
Drunken Master claims that Spain’s election was “a stunning victory for democracy. 90% of Spain's population disagreed with Aznar's decision to send troops to Iraq.”
A stunning victory for Socialism (not to mention al-Qaeda) maybe, but hardly a stunning victory for democracy when so many of the electorate were running scared because they thought there was “a gun to their head”. The only hope for DM is that he was living up to his handle when he submitted his comment: otherwise, if he’s Canadian, his future is clearly toast.
Speaking of WWII, Americans overwhelming refused to become involved when war broke out in Europe, September, 1939; the peoples’ rationale was that Europe’s stupid conflicts were not in America’s national interest. Public opinion in America was quite valid, to a point – given WWI’s carnage; the prevailing sentiment was “why should we engage in another Euro conflict to rescue the French from themselves.”
The US government’s Administrative branch, headed by FDR, saw things a bit differently. As an aside, DM: this is why democracies occasionally elect “leaders” to make the unpopular choices that the average-man-on-the-street is incapable of making (cf. the dis-graced Jean Chretian , Canadian PM from 1993-2003.)
Roosevelt understood at once both the passions of the population as well as the longer-term implications of Hitler’s European ambitions; he knew that he had to bide his time despite America’s generous (albeit clandestine) support of the war-effort in Europe.
FDR's, and the world’s, moment arrived on Sunday, December 7, 1941. FDR's response to the Pearl Harbour outrage was "to let loose the dogs of war" to recapture civility from the out-riders of civilization: Saxon and Nipponese war-mongers.
al-Qaeda's next.
