A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/leishman.html
Peace protesters ignorant of history
By RORY LEISHMAN -- London Free Press
February 23, 2003
By any standard, the peace demonstrations that took place last weekend were massive. The world has not seen anything quite like them since the mid-1930s. In Britain at that time, Sir Winston Churchill and a few other well-informed politicians were calling for urgent measures to strengthen British defences against the dire threat to world peace posed by a massive, secret rearmament campaign begun by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
Most people in Britain paid no heed to these warnings. They turned out by the tens of thousands to demonstrate in favour of British disarmament, even after Hitler signalled his aggressive intentions by withdrawing Germany from the World Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933.
On May 22, 1935, prime minister Stanley Baldwin shocked the Commons at Westminster with the disclosure that Germany had achieved parity with Britain in the air and was rapidly pulling ahead. To counter the menace, he proposed some wholly inadequate additions to the British air force.
Still, that was too much for Clement Attlee, then serving as leader of the Opposition for the Labour party. In response to Baldwin, he said: "We stand for collective security through the League of Nations. We reject the use of force as an instrument of policy. Our policy is not one of seeking security through rearmament, but through disarmament."
In September 1938, prime minister Neville Chamberlain capitulated to Hitler at the Munich conference and issued his notorious declaration of "peace in our time." He insisted that Britain, France and Czechoslovakia had no justification for taking military action against Germany because Hitler posed no imminent threat to world peace.
Today's peace activists have learned nothing from this tragic history. Like their misguided predecessors, they insist there is no pressing need for democratic powers to take military action against Iraq because Saddam Hussein poses no imminent threat to peace in the Middle East.
Yet it should be evident to the meanest intelligence that the United States, Britain and Australia cannot deploy thousands of troops in the deserts of the Persian Gulf for more than a few months. If those troops are withdrawn before Saddam is overthrown, how long would it take him to kick the United Nations weapons inspectors out of Iraq once again?
If Saddam is not stopped now, he is virtually certain to acquire nuclear weapons within a few years.
In that event, the United States, Britain and Australia might well be excused if they decided to concentrate on their own defence while leaving equivocal allies such as Germany, France and Canada to cope on their own with the horrendous perils posed by nuclear-armed terrorists.
Meanwhile, what about the millions of Arabs, Jews, Kurds and Persians in the Middle East who live in fear of Saddam?
Few peace activists betray much concern for their plight, just as few peace activists in the 1930s had much sympathy for the Germans, Jews and Czechs in Hitler's concentration camps. Then, as now, more than a few anti-Semites have infiltrated the ranks of the deluded peace activists.
Churchill admonished in his memoirs of the 1930s, The Gathering Storm: "It would be wrong in judging the policy of the British Government not to remember the passionate desire for peace which animated the uninformed, misinformed majority of the British people, and seemed to threaten with political extinction any party or politician who dared to take any other line. This, of course, is no excuse for political leaders who fall short of their duty. It is much better for parties or politicians to be turned out of office than to imperil the life of the nation."
Today, everyone with a passionate desire for peace should pray the political leaders of Britain and the United States will not fail in their duty.
It's mainly up to them to initiate the timely and resolute military actions necessary to safeguard the world from inevitable catastrophes if rogue nations such as Iraq and North Korea are allowed to get away with brandishing nuclear weapons.
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail. Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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