Donald Trump says that if the leader of ISIS compliments him, he’ll compliment the leader of ISIS right back.
If [Putin] says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.
–Donald J. Trump, speaking to Matt Lauer during interview, Sept. 7
I didn’t watch the debacle Wednesday, and that line by Trump is one I hadn’t read about until just now.
But now that I know about it, it occurs to me that it’s a good thing Donald Trump wasn’t president or British prime minister in, say, 1939. There was, of course, Neville Chamberlain, but I don’t think Peace For Our Time was maintained for a few extra months before Hitler marched into Poland because Hitler said great things about Chamberlain.
Although maybe that would have worked had Hitler thought of trying it. It could have cut down on the negotiating time in Munich that resulted in the Pact. By a lot, I guess.
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UPDATE: Okay. I just posted this in the Comments thread in response to, well, comments in the thread:
Lordy, folks. The Chamberlain reference was intended as a flip joke. I had thought that “but I don’t think Peace For Our Time was maintained for a few extra months before Hitler marched into Poland because Hitler said great things about Chamberlain” would be recognized for what it was intended to allude to: that Chamberlain based his action on extremely serious facts—England needed time to build a war machine, which notwithstanding the increasingly obvious threat it had not done because of overwhelming resistance to the very thought of war among Brits in the wake of WWI—not on the basis of some personal ego thing.
I didn’t expect most readers to know that Britain badly needed to buy time, or so Chamberlain presumed, since it had very little in the way of military capacity then. But I did expect people to get that my point was that no leader or would-be leader in his or her right mind would base foreign policy decisions on some opposing leader’s personal compliments to him or her.
C’mon, guys. Seriously ….
Hope that takes care of it.
Meanwhile, I just read that Hillary Clinton became ill today at a 9/11 memorial event in Manhattan today. I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s okay.
Added 9/11 at 2:23 p.m.
Munich was 1938. Germany was a few years out of deep depression and unarmed in 1933.
Germany was not prepared for a big war until Spring 1940. Not so much then. Better armed France and England was so easy in 1940.
The real show was June 1941.
Pushing back at Munich, it likely would have been ‘mobilize some French divisions and over’ without a shot, likely would have had Germany much more mobilized when it finally did go to war.
When I see Munich or Chamberlain or Hitler analogies I immediately think logical fallacy.
I used 1939 because that was when the war started. Not sure what you mean by “Better armed France and England was so easy in 1940.”
German Order of Battle on invasion of Poland. In August 1939.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_order_of_battle_for_Operation_Fall_Weiss
For a country “not prepared for a big war” that seems quite a lot of army groups and divisions.
Do you really have evidence that France and England had actual deployable field armies that could have taken these forces on if they had been sent West in 1938 rather than East in 1939? Doesn’t look as easy as ‘mobilize some French divisions and over’ to me.
I believe this is unfair to Chamberlain whose real policy of containment is unfairly labelled as appeasement. The options Britain had militarily were very limited as was shown by the rapid defeat in the Battle of France. At the time of the Munich Agreement, Chamberlain had already undertaken a massive commitment to rearmament including developing the Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes so critical to the Battle of Britain. Churchill arguably fought the war with Chamberlain’s army. Also, Chamberlain’s motives were neither cowardly nor self-serving. Churchill said it best after Chamberlain’s death in 1940.
“It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart – the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned… Herr Hitler protests with frantic words and gestures that he has only desired peace. What do these ravings and outpourings count before the silence of Neville Chamberlain’s tomb?”
I think it unlikely that anyone will be moved to say anything similar about Donald Trump.
I find it contemptible that the “Appeasement” argument is repeatedly brought out in support of wars which prove to be ill-conceived adventures based on lies and disinformation. The Iraq invasion is a recent egregious example of this.
I agree. See my comment to the general thread.
Clintons said Milosevic was Hitler!
In addition to appeasement about goatherds coming to America in Airbuses the Clinton neocons roll out “civilian protective operations” as if Aleppo would be worse off without all those weapons from Libya.
They bring up Munich or CPO to sell wars that have no moral foundation.
Why those wars never go well: in war the moral is to the materiel as 3 is to 1. Napoleon.
Lordy, folks. The Chamberlain reference was intended as a flip joke. I had thought that “but I don’t think Peace For Our Time was maintained for a few extra months before Hitler marched into Poland because Hitler said great things about Chamberlain” would be recognized for what it was intended to allude to: that Chamberlain based his action on extremely serious facts—England needed time to build a war machine, which notwithstanding the increasingly obvious threat it had not done because of overwhelming resistance to the very thought of war among Brits in the wake of WWI—not on the basis of some personal ego thing.
I didn’t expect most readers to know that Britain badly needed to buy time, or so Chamberlain presumed, since it had very little in the way of military capacity then. But I did expect people to get that my point was that no leader or would-be leader in his or her right mind would base foreign policy decisions on some opposing leader’s personal compliments to him or her.
C’mon, guys. Seriously ….
When did Putin become the leader of ISIS?
Putin is not the leader of ISIS, Warren…in fact, the US and Russia just agreed to coordinate their attacks on ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Al Qaeda) in Syria…i don’t understand what that has to do with all this Hitler & Chamberlain discussion in the rest of this thread, though…