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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (44025)	4/11/2003 5:13:42 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Michael Kelly...pre war article.. Today's phony peaces really are phony. "The military option should only be a last resort," lectured France—a consistent nation, if nothing else: "Frenchmen, do not attempt to commit any action which might bring terrible reprisals," Marshal Pétain said in an appeal to his countrymen for continued collaboration with the Nazis on the day after the Americans and the British arrived in Normandy to exercise the military option. It is all enough to give phony peaces a bad name. The original phony peace was at least, so to speak, real. France and England had desperately sound reasons for appeasing Hitler and avoiding war with Hitler's Reich: if there was a war, France and England would need to fight it. And having seen a generation of their men, and their national power, destroyed in the Great War, and having in consequence all but disarmed themselves, they were in no position to fight. Neville Chamberlain is derided for his "peace for our time"; indeed, his Blixian selfdelusion is cringe-making still: "In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face," he wrote after meeting Hitler, "I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon ..." Today we remember Chamberlain as the consummate fool, and it seems obvious to us what seemed obvious to Chamberlain's political opponent and successor. Britain had faced a choice "between shame and war," Winston Churchill wrote. "We have chosen shame, and we will get war." But it wasn't obvious to many until forced and forced and forced again on them, and it was Chamberlain, not Churchill, who was cheered in the streets when he brought back the peace that the people so badly wanted.