Monday, October 17, 2005

Peace In Our Time?

In the post below about the vote on the Iraqi constitution, I was going to draw a parallel between that document which papered over the Iraqi military quagmire and the Munich pact that Neville Chamberlain waved in the air after he and Hitler signed it on September 29, 1938.

The pact that Chamberlain signed with Hitler ended up papering over the Nazi's quest for world domination, and though the insurgents carrying out their cowardly acts of terrorism in Iraq do not seek anything of that scope (though a cataclysmic, world-engulfing war between their version of Islam and "the infidels" would suit them just fine), the voting for the Iraqi constitution does provide a bit of a diversion for them to carry out and possible escalate their acts of barbarism. In other words, the voting on that document isn't going to ultimately settle a thing.

Getting back to Chamberlain, though...after reading this from Sheila Samples at The Smirking Chimp (needs a bit of a copy edit, but her points are otherwise excellent), I decided to recall this bit of history that, I believe, parallels this moment. Dubya absurdly fancies himself as a figure a la Winston Churchill, but it’s more appropriate as far as I’m concerned to draw a parallel with “Winnie’s” predecessor (Chamberlain did some things right as I recall from reading about him, but he was terribly wrong for the ages on this one).

Update: I definitely didn't have the comedy team of Chavez and Mugabe in mind when I wrote what I said above, by the way (I guess these two guys will be opening soon for Don Rickles at The Golden Nugget in Atlantic City?).

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