I think “traumatized” is a trifle strong. The Democrat Congress left South Vietnam defenseless against an all out attack from the North. Our military did its duty, Walter Cronkite’s vapors notwithstanding.

The message dates from Korea. You don’t fight wars unless you intend to win. Let me be clear. This mess will end with Washington or Tehran in ruins. This has been a 30 year war, begun on the watch of the feckless Jimmy Carter.

People just don’t want to take the enemy at his word. Hitler told us what he was going to do. Few believed him. The Islamofascists have told us their intentions. Despite proof, people still won’t believe.

“You can’t handle the truth.” Jack Nicholson was right. Because a sensible response would be an ultimatum to Tehran: disarmament or destruction.

Those who criticize Israel are living in a cloud-cuckoo-land that makes the appeaser of the late 1930s look hardnosed by comparison. At least the Chamberlains didn’t have a Nazi past to look back on.

Comparing between today’s appeasers and those of the 1930′s is a gross injustice to that previous generation. As you point out, they did not have the Nazi precedent. But what they DID have was the World War I precedent. Take a look at the casualty figures from that war:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWdeaths.htm
http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/casualties.htm

It simply boggles the mind. France alone took six million casulties. Six million! As much as I despise the French, they were not surrender monkeys. At least not back then. I can’t blame them for rolling over in World War II after what they suffered a mere 20 years prior.

If America had suffered comparable casualties of something like 20 million in Vietnam, would we have fought the Gulf War I? I doubt we would have even won the Cold War. Just look at how traumatized we were by the relatively low casualty figures we actually did suffer.

Between these two precedents, we can make judgements about when wars should be fought and when they shouldn’t. I cannot look back on those of the 30′s who in turn could only look back to the 10′s precedent and judge them harshly for their appeasement. World War I was an epochal disaster and it should NOT have been fought. We are dealing with its aftermath to this day. Even World War II would not have taken place if the Great War had not.

But I can judge today’s appeasers. They are morally and intellectully rotten cowardly bastards in comparison.

The fundamentalist Islamic enemy we face today is as purely evil as the Nazi’s. And the casualties we can expect if we confront this evil today are vanishingly small even in comparison to the UNCERTAINTY in the casualty levels of the Great War. But if we wait until this enemy is armed with nuclear weapons, the carnage of the first two world wars could seem small in comparison.

This threat MUST be confronted and it must be confronted now. And if we fail to do so because of today’s appeasers, then they deserve a special place in Hell. For civilization itself hangs in the balance.

OP1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

France has been a fickle but at times forceful ally. They stood foursquare behind Kennedy’s embargo of Cuba (Queber , later they insisted on the deployment of Pershings in response to the Soviet provocation of positioning the equivalent in the Warsaw Pact, and (perhaps) now they are moving definitely to contain and discipline the fascists in the most pivotal campaign (so far) in the GWOT. Granted, not out of altruism, but because they finally see no other option that will work out as well for them, both in terms of relationships with their past ME clients, and their own restive populace.

It is just possible that this is a tipping point for France. Irrespective of their politicians that abase themselves before the tyrants of Tehran.

“There is apparently no mention of “immediate ceasefire” at all…”

Yes, I think this “ceasefire” proposal will do more to limit the options of the Hisbullards and their European confreres, than it will do to limit the Israelis.

It is shaping up to be a rather nice diplomatic figleaf, so that everyone can appear suitably “concerned” about the “crisis” — a crisis precipitated by passivity in the face of, and/or outright enabling of, terrorism, by both the Europeans and the better Lebanese (and, sorry to say, to some extent by us here in the US, too) while still allowing Israel to save everybody else’s sorry a**es.

Jamie Irons