Victor Davis Hanson, historian that he is, ponders the unnerving parallels between our time and the 1930s.
[D]eja vu pertains not just to us, but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists hearken to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism. Similarly, they feed off victimization -- not just recent defeats, but centuries-old bitterness at the rise of the West. Their version of the stab-in-the-back Versailles Treaty is always the creation of Israel.Posted by Alan at February 18, 2006 06:02 PMJust as Hitler concocted incidents such as the burning of the Reichstag to create outrage, Islamist leaders incite frenzy in their followers over a supposed flushed Koran at Guantanamo and several inflammatory cartoons, some of them never published by Danish newspapers at all.
Anti-Semitism, of course, is the mother's milk of fascism. It is always, they say, a small group of Jews -- whether shadowy Cabinet advisers and international bankers of the 1930s or the manipulative neoconservatives and Israeli leadership of the present -- who alone stir up the trouble.
The point of the comparison is not to suggest history simply repeats itself, but to learn why intelligent people delude themselves into embracing naive policies. After the Taliban and Saddam were removed, the furious reply of the radical Islamist world was to censor Western newspapers, along with Iran's accelerated efforts to get the bomb.
In response, either the West will continue to stand up now to these recurring post-September 11, 2001, threats, or it will see the bullies' demands increase as its own resistance weakens. Like the appeasement of the 1930s, opting for the easier choice will only guarantee a more costly one later.