Mister Moleman and his Friends

Today’s news:  Russian leaders Vladimir Putin rejects sanctions against Iran, even as China indicates willingness to consider more sanctions.

Tomorrow’s headline:  China rejects Iran sanctions, even as Russia softens its position.

The Day after Tomorrow’s headine: China tags out, Russia tags into Iran-defense match.

Several things become clearer every day.

First, Iran is playing its diplomatic stalling game with masterful finesse.  They have been at the table for years with the Europeans, and now with us. Feeble sanctions are enacted, and then flouted by various nations.  And in the background, the steady hum of thousands of gas centrifuges, both in Qom and Natanz, creating the stuff of Iran’s dream: the Jew-liquidating Final Solution: the Mullah Of All Bombs.

Second, Russia and China are not displeased with Iran’s challenge to the West, and will not impede it in any way.  But, to avoid burning all bridges to the West, Russia and China will continue to play tag-team in threatening to veto any UN Security Council action, swapping the good-cop/bad-cop roles from time to time.  They know that the present US administration will not consider military pressure on Iran without a UN mandate.  Russia and China are Iran’s insurance policy against any possible UN action.  With their backing, Iran fears no sanctions, and has zero incentive to negotiate in good faith.

As our president receives worldwide acclaim (or at least Norway-wide) for his policy of appeasing Iran’s “legitimate concerns” in endless “good-faith” negotiations, my mind again wanders back seventy-some years, to the last comparable exercise in appeasement of dictators.

I have written about Obama’s appeasement as Chamberlain revisited, here, here, and here.  I have quoted Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Neville Chamberlain himself.  Now I bring a new voice to bear:  John F. Kennedy.

As a Harvard student in 1940, in part to distance himself from his father’s by-then-discredited views, JFK published a book, Why England Slept, analyzing England’s 1930’s appeasement policy and its roots in pacifism and isolationism.  In discussing the British government’s wild under-estimation of the Nazi threat, he writes:

“Baldwin [Chamberlain’s predecessor as PM] should be condemned for his blindness and his unwillingness to face unpleasant facts, but I do not believe that he and his entire cabinet knowingly betrayed the country.  They all made the mistake of misjudging Germany’s potentialities and the Nazi psychology.”

There is every reason to believe that the same mistakes are being made today by our president.  “Unwillingness to face unpleasant facts” is a matter of pride with him.

[Flashback: Bullwinkle: “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”  Rocky: “That trick never works.”  Bullwinkle: “This time for sure.” Bullwinkle (after trick fails): “I gotta get a new hat.”]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s voice speaks to us from the past, and today’s Democratic Party, believing that history began in 2000, or 1972 at the earliest, is incapable of understanding the words.