Great article from Thomas Sowell on parallels between disarming Iraq today and Germany in 1930s

[Queasy]

Link

Thomas Sowell

Disarming a country

History does not literally repeat itself, but sometimes it comes awfully close. Iraq is not the first dangerous dictatorship that international agreements tried to keep disarmed. Nor is it the first where that effort failed.

Back in the 1930s, Germany's military forces were limited by a ban on conscription, by limitations on the number and kinds of weapons it could have, and by a requirement that it station no troops in its own industrialized Rhineland. These requirements were in the treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War.

Demilitarizing the Rhineland was perhaps the crucial provision of these international restrictions.

Germany's population and industrial might, together with its strong military traditions and its aggressive policies which had brought on the First World War, made it the most dangerous nation on the continent of Europe. But it could not attack any other nation when its own industrial heartland was undefended and therefore could be quickly seized by French troops, who were just across the Rhine.

Like Saddam Hussein today, Hitler at first pretended to go along with these restrictions, all the while clandestinely building up his military forces. However, this was clandestine only in the sense that the general public did not know about it. British intelligence was well aware of what he was doing and kept the Prime Minister informed.

The real question was whether Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin wanted to be the one to break the bad news to the British public or whether he would keep quiet, get re-elected, and pass the problem on to his successors -- as Bill Clinton would do in a later era. Baldwin did a Clinton.

In later years, Stanley Baldwin tried to justify his inaction:

"Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming, and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain."

But this was not just Baldwin's failure or that of his Conservative Party. The Liberal Party in 1935 demanded "clear proof" of a need for rearmament against the Nazis, much as many in politics and the media today are demanding "clear proof" of a need to act against Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile the Labour Party was advocating disarmament and innumerable groups were promoting international agreements and diplomatic exchanges as a substitute for military power. Diplomatic agreements and arms limitations treaties proliferated throughout the whole period between the two World Wars.

None of this had any practical effect, except to lull the Western democracies into inaction while Germany and Japan rapidly built up their military forces.

Hitler began openly violating the restrictions put on Germany, one at a time, allowing him to gauge what reaction there would be among the Western powers and in the League of Nations. Each violation that he got away with led him to try another -- and then another.

The key violation -- without which he would not be able to wage war -- was moving German troops into the Rhineland in 1936, in open defiance of the treaty of Versailles. Both he and his generals knew that the French army was so overwhelmingly more powerful at this point that German troops would not have been able to put up even token resistance if France sent its troops in to oust them.

France did nothing. It was the first of many nothings that France did in a series of crises that led up to World War II.

When Hitler had built up his clandestine forces sufficiently, he simply stopped keeping them secret and confronted the West with enough power that he knew they would not dare to challenge him. The opportunity to stop him was past.

Those who wanted "clear proof" now had it. In just a few years, they would have even clearer proof when the Nazis invaded France and subjugated it in just six weeks -- and then began bombing London, night after night.

While history does not literally repeat itself, sometimes it comes very close.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

 

[Red Dawn]

Yawn! We are going to attack Iraq, the only question is when and who is going to help us.

 

[shiner]

Good article. Sowell usually hits the nail right on the head.

 

[iamwiz82]

Unfortunately, there is a big difference in the events unfolding today. France isnt a neighbor to Iraq

 

[Hammer]

awesome, i was explaining this exact same thing to someone else just the other day.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

So his contention is that Saddam wants to take over the world. If unopposed, he will have an army of sufficient military might that he can overrun the rest of the world. Ok...

 

[glenn1]

Unfortunately, there is a big difference in the events unfolding today. France isnt a neighbor to Iraq

Unfortunate in that it weakens the argument of the author, or unfortunate in that Iraq and France aren't neighbors?

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
So his contention is that Saddam wants to take over the world. If unopposed, he will have an army of sufficient military might that he can overrun the rest of the world. Ok...

Exactly. The premise is bad, and all other parallels are immaterial. If Iraq tried to take over Kuwait, they'd be crushed again quickly. They have no power to take over a country, much less a portion of the world. The world landscape is very different today.

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: shinerburke
Good article. Sowell usually hits the nail right on the head.

I agree it's a good article and makes for interesting readfing. Unfortunately he missed the head and bent the nail on it. Even without an invasion of Iraq we are preventing him from building a force capable of accomplishing anything like the Nazi's did. Secondly, like I said, Iraq is going to be invaded, Bush more or less said so and unless Hussien does something totally out of character we will go through with our intentions of disarming Iraq and ousting his regime.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
So his contention is that Saddam wants to take over the world. If unopposed, he will have an army of sufficient military might that he can overrun the rest of the world. Ok...

Exactly. The premise is bad, and all other parallels are immaterial. If Iraq tried to take over Kuwait, they'd be crushed again quickly. They have no power to take over a country, much less a portion of the world. The world landscape is very different today.

Sowell's premise is that we know Saddam and Iraq have been producing weapons of mass destruction that he is not supposed to possess. If we sit on that information and do nothing but draw up endless and meaningless resolutions and agreements like the way that UK and France did in the 30s, then it will likely lead to Iraq attacking one of its neighbors and destabilizing the region. It may not happen immediately but will happen eventually if nothing is done.

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
So his contention is that Saddam wants to take over the world. If unopposed, he will have an army of sufficient military might that he can overrun the rest of the world. Ok...

Exactly. The premise is bad, and all other parallels are immaterial. If Iraq tried to take over Kuwait, they'd be crushed again quickly. They have no power to take over a country, much less a portion of the world. The world landscape is very different today.

Sowell's premise is that we know Saddam and Iraq have been producing weapons of mass destruction that he is not supposed to possess. If we sit on that information and do nothing but draw up endless and meaningless resolutions and agreements like the way that UK and France did in the 30s, then it will likely lead to Iraq attacking one of its neighbors and destabilizing the region. It may not happen immediately but will happen eventually if nothing is done.

Thanks....you just saved me some typing.

 

[Sahakiel]

Bah. I say do what every other great power in history has done and that is subjugate the world piece by piece until you control every corner. Stay in power for hundreds of years or five seconds until internal factions rip your empire apart and plunge mankind into civil war after which either a powerful faction will arise the ruler of a major portion while the rest of the world is in chaos, or the war will be so bad nobody will end up with enough power to stay in control and we can all return to barbarism.
Hecka lot easier than sitting around wondering if what you're doing is ethical.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Queasy, remember that Saddam wants to survive while maintaining what power he has. That is my basic premise. When he attacked Kuwait, how long did a response take? Now if he has other weapons, they would not be something that would defeat the rest of the world. He knows that. He is many things, but not suicidal. So why does have WMD? I would argue in self defense, like many countries in world. Do I like it? No, however attacking the people of Iraq because of this is not something I could justify. Someone mentioned strawman to me yesterday. I think the Hitler/Saddam analogy fits in here well. If Saddam attacks, then there is no debate. So many petty dictators could have been used for such an analogy, but he picked Hitler, a move that was clearly calculated to create fear. Saddam is no Hitler. Bozo the clown gone mad maybe.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
Queasy, remember that Saddam wants to survive while maintaining what power he has. That is my basic premise. When he attacked Kuwait, how long did a response take? Now if he has other weapons, they would not be something that would defeat the rest of the world. He knows that. He is many things, but not suicidal. So why does have WMD? I would argue in self defense, like many countries in world. Do I like it? No, however attacking the people of Iraq because of this is not something I could justify. Someone mentioned strawman to me yesterday. I think the Hitler/Saddam analogy fits in here well. If Saddam attacks, then there is no debate. So many petty dictators could have been used for such an analogy, but he picked Hitler, a move that was clearly calculated to create fear. Saddam is no Hitler. Bozo the clown gone mad maybe.

Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. The UN imposed deadline was Jan 15, 1991. The first strikes against Iraq started on Jan 15, 1991.

Again, could Iraq strike anybody now? No, but if left to their own devices and continue to be in open violation of UN condition imposed after the last time they attacked someone, it is very likely. Iraq has invaded two sovereign countries under the leadership of Hussein and used weapons of mass destruction against his enemy and his people. He is not a Hitler but I wouldn't trust him to quietly sit within his own borders anymore than I would Hitler.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Well, Queasy, I do not trust him, but many here believe he is not a danger. In fact people here think Saddam is not to be taken seriously

Do I want to get rid of him? Yep, but after counting the costs, I still remain unmoved to attack Iraq.

 

[Moonbeam]

Lets not forget that the Admin has so far given us the head of the CIA under oath saying that Iraq is not a threat, a passive Israel that's not having trouble sleeping at night, and some aluminium tubes. We are going to kill a bunch of people who can't hurt us because the Bush league has a new religion, America Uber Alles. We can morally only go to war if Iraq is a threat so they are fabricating a lie that it is. It's easy to buy into because we're afraid. When people are afraid they kill without thinking. Makes you proud.

 

[Moonbeam]

I just saw the aluminum tubes in your sig, Hay I mentioned them too as you can see. Iraq has me scared. I bet their working on a Alzheimer weapon.

 

[hagbard]

Originally posted by: Queasy
Link

Thomas Sowell

Disarming a country

History does not literally repeat itself, but sometimes it comes awfully close. Iraq is not the first dangerous dictatorship that international agreements tried to keep disarmed. Nor is it the first where that effort failed.

Back in the 1930s, Germany's military forces were limited by a ban on conscription, by limitations on the number and kinds of weapons it could have, and by a requirement that it station no troops in its own industrialized Rhineland. These requirements were in the treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War.

Demilitarizing the Rhineland was perhaps the crucial provision of these international restrictions.

Germany's population and industrial might, together with its strong military traditions and its aggressive policies which had brought on the First World War, made it the most dangerous nation on the continent of Europe. But it could not attack any other nation when its own industrial heartland was undefended and therefore could be quickly seized by French troops, who were just across the Rhine.

Like Saddam Hussein today, Hitler at first pretended to go along with these restrictions, all the while clandestinely building up his military forces. However, this was clandestine only in the sense that the general public did not know about it. British intelligence was well aware of what he was doing and kept the Prime Minister informed.

The real question was whether Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin wanted to be the one to break the bad news to the British public or whether he would keep quiet, get re-elected, and pass the problem on to his successors -- as Bill Clinton would do in a later era. Baldwin did a Clinton.

In later years, Stanley Baldwin tried to justify his inaction:

"Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming, and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain."

But this was not just Baldwin's failure or that of his Conservative Party. The Liberal Party in 1935 demanded "clear proof" of a need for rearmament against the Nazis, much as many in politics and the media today are demanding "clear proof" of a need to act against Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile the Labour Party was advocating disarmament and innumerable groups were promoting international agreements and diplomatic exchanges as a substitute for military power. Diplomatic agreements and arms limitations treaties proliferated throughout the whole period between the two World Wars.

None of this had any practical effect, except to lull the Western democracies into inaction while Germany and Japan rapidly built up their military forces.

Hitler began openly violating the restrictions put on Germany, one at a time, allowing him to gauge what reaction there would be among the Western powers and in the League of Nations. Each violation that he got away with led him to try another -- and then another.

The key violation -- without which he would not be able to wage war -- was moving German troops into the Rhineland in 1936, in open defiance of the treaty of Versailles. Both he and his generals knew that the French army was so overwhelmingly more powerful at this point that German troops would not have been able to put up even token resistance if France sent its troops in to oust them.

France did nothing. It was the first of many nothings that France did in a series of crises that led up to World War II.

When Hitler had built up his clandestine forces sufficiently, he simply stopped keeping them secret and confronted the West with enough power that he knew they would not dare to challenge him. The opportunity to stop him was past.

Those who wanted "clear proof" now had it. In just a few years, they would have even clearer proof when the Nazis invaded France and subjugated it in just six weeks -- and then began bombing London, night after night.

While history does not literally repeat itself, sometimes it comes very close.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

I used to like Thomas Sowell.

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
So his contention is that Saddam wants to take over the world. If unopposed, he will have an army of sufficient military might that he can overrun the rest of the world. Ok...

Exactly. The premise is bad, and all other parallels are immaterial. If Iraq tried to take over Kuwait, they'd be crushed again quickly. They have no power to take over a country, much less a portion of the world. The world landscape is very different today.

Sowell's premise is that we know Saddam and Iraq have been producing weapons of mass destruction that he is not supposed to possess. If we sit on that information and do nothing but draw up endless and meaningless resolutions and agreements like the way that UK and France did in the 30s, then it will likely lead to Iraq attacking one of its neighbors and destabilizing the region. It may not happen immediately but will happen eventually if nothing is done.

Was the region destabilized last time? Why would it be another time, and what evidence do you have that he'd try another idiotic move like that again, when it would certainly end with his own death.

 

[Moonbeam]

The idea is to create the illusion that it's not the people who want war that are the unpatriotic fools, but the people who are trying to save us from a horrible mistake.

A further fact that people ignore is that nobody will ever know what the world woud nave been like if Hitler won. We could get hit by an asteroid in a few years that only German organization could cope with. There is no second guessing the past in any direction. We do what we can only now. Bush is lying about the reasons for war. He believes in a big future for America. Unfortunatley it is an immoral future.

 

[Rockhound]

Originally posted by: Hayabusarider
Queasy, remember that Saddam wants to survive while maintaining what power he has. That is my basic premise. When he attacked Kuwait, how long did a response take? Now if he has other weapons, they would not be something that would defeat the rest of the world. He knows that. He is many things, but not suicidal. So why does have WMD? I would argue in self defense, like many countries in world. Do I like it? No, however attacking the people of Iraq because of this is not something I could justify. Someone mentioned strawman to me yesterday. I think the Hitler/Saddam analogy fits in here well. If Saddam attacks, then there is no debate. So many petty dictators could have been used for such an analogy, but he picked Hitler, a move that was clearly calculated to create fear. Saddam is no Hitler. Bozo the clown gone mad maybe.

No he is not. But in today's world, a Saddam has access to much deadlier weapons than Hitler ever did. And look what Hitler did! Hitler had all conventional armaments. Tanks, planes, artillery, infantry, etc. Thousands upon thousands of these. Saddam has anthrax, VX gas, etc. and trying to develop a nuclear weapon. It only takes one you know and bye bye either New York, Paris, Tel Aviv or Berlin, etc. And even if he isn't, I'm sure he'd be more than willing to develop it and hand it off to some terrorist (does Bin Laden ring a bell?). So, are you willing to take that chance? Look what Hitler started in 1939 with everything he had and look what Saddam can do with one bomb. Some petty dictator we have here currently. That's what makes it all the more worse. Tell me you aren't afraid. Tell me you really honestly think he has WMD for self-defense? He was using chemical weapons against his own people. I guess that constitutes self-defense then. We wouldn't want a crazed dictator being toppled by his own people now would we?

 

[Rockhound]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The idea is to create the illusion that it's not the people who want war that are the unpatriotic fools, but the people who are trying to save us from a horrible mistake.

A further fact that people ignore is that nobody will ever know what the world woud nave been like if Hitler won. We could get hit by an asteroid in a few years that only German organization could cope with. There is no second guessing the past in any direction. We do what we can only now. Bush is lying about the reasons for war. He believes in a big future for America. Unfortunatley it is an immoral future.

Oh Moonbeam pleeeeeeaaase! We don't know what the world would have been like??? Where the hell are you coming from??!!! What have you been reading and paying attention to exactly? Do you know any history whatsoever? Hitler attacked Europe and the Soviet Union at the same time! He was going after Britain as well. We all know what his intentions were. Don't be naive! He killed 6 million jews. Only the US, France, Britain, etc. stopped him from completing this. His entire goal was world conquest. German rule. Pretty dam obvious if you ask me. It would have been a nightmare to say the least.

Oh, so what you are really implying here is that what Hitler did was ok, but the U.S. pre-emptively striking Iraq to prevent nuclear holocaust is foolish? OMG! How stupid are you really? Yea, a big future for America rather than no future.

 

[gypsyman]

Too often today, we hear that so and so in not a neighbor of so and so: Ergo, no threat here. The world has shrunk my friends. Distance geographicly is no longer a shield of safety. Technology and terrorists have negated that protection.

 

[Moonbeam]

Rockhound, my point couldn't have been more obvious. It is impossible to know any future including alternative ones. That is just a simple fact but perhaps one too much for you to grasp. Just give it some thought, Maybe you'll get it.

gypssyman, According to the rate at which knowledge is doubleing, many expect smart single individuals will be able to destroy the world. This is why, by the way, that it is imparitive that we kill everybody now while we still can.

 

[her209]

If you think there is no difference bwteen 1930s and 2003 then you need to be b!tchslapped a few times.