Deal or no deal: The price of appeasement

On July 26, 2015, I was honored to be asked to speak at the Stop Iran Rally in San Diego, California. Below is a copy of my speech:

What would you say if told you that the U.S. government has decided to give billions of dollars to support Hamas and Hezbollah? That would seem crazy, correct. Impossible? Of course, by immediately giving Iran $150 billion dollars for simply signing a piece of paper, that is essentially what our government will be doing.

After this Administration infamously ignored its own “red line” and turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons by Iran’s proxy (the Assad government in Syria), I was really worried that any deal that we might reach with Iran would be a bad deal. And after all of the false deadlines and repeated extensions of the nuclear talks and more slipping “bottom lines” from this Administration for the critical deal points with Iran, I became even more worried that we would end up with a bad deal.

But, it turns out this deal is not a bad deal … it is a HORRIBLE DEAL. The incredible Caroline Glick today is going to discuss after me the particulars of this deal and why it is so bad (no dismantling of the nuclear infrastructure, “anytime/anywhere inspections” turning into “maybe in around 2-4 months inspections,” the lifting of the arms embargo…), but the bottom line is that this deal (unchecked) ensures that Iran will be an economic power in 5 years, a military power in 10 years and a nuclear power in 15 years!

When my grandmother was 22 years old, she watched helplessly and in horror when the two democratic world powers back then — Britain and France — infamously abandoned Czechoslovakia (and most certainly the Jews of Czechoslovakia) in 1938, in exchange for an agreement that Britain and France’s leaders (with the notable exception of Winston Churchill) hailed in the same terms being employed currently by the leaders of the P5+1 countries in support of the current agreement with Iran.

Back then, we heard all the same rationalizations for appeasing Hitler that we hear today in support of the deal with Iran. We heard that the agreement with Nazi Germany was a great deal for the world and that it would avoid war and create “peace for our time”. One year later, Europe was consumed in a war that led to the slaughter of millions of people, including almost every person in my grandmother’s family.

Back in 1938 (and without the benefit of the lessons of WWII and North Korea), France and Britain ignored Churchill’s repeated warnings about appeasing evil, and many even called Churchill a warmonger. They ignored the concerns made known to them by the Czech government and they made a deal with Nazi Germany that sacrificed the safety and security of Czechoslovakia based on the naïve belief that appeasing the Nazis would bring peace to the rest of the world and satisfy the mad-men that ran Germany.

Today, echoing 1938 and Munich, the leaders of the USA, France and Britain ignore Netanyahu’s repeated warnings and the concerns expressed to them by Iran’s Sunni Arab neighbors and Israel; and claim that not only do they know better, but that those who disagree with them are the warmongers, and they claim the ONLY choice we have is between this agreement and war and that this agreement with Iran somehow makes the world a safer place.

The crazy thing is that as absurdly bad as the Munich Accord with Germany was in 1938, it was far more defensible in September 1938 than this proposed deal with Iran is today!

In 1938, no one in Britain or France had the benefit of learning from their own history of what happens when you appease an evil dictator or that of the utter failure of the nuclear agreement with North Korea.

And, as of September 1938,, Nazi Germany had not fired a shot against any British or French citizens. It had not yet claimed it wanted to destroy France or Britain and it had not yet made known its desire to kill off all of world Jewry.

Iran, on the other hand, since the Mullahs took it over in 1979, has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and citizens. Other than Al Qaeda, no one has been responsible for killing more Americans than Iran. It has repeatedly threatened death to America and to Israel. And Iran has sponsored and supported terror attacks all over the world. Iran planned and implemented along its terror proxy, Hezbollah, the bombing of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds. In 2012, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard placed a bomb on a car belonging to the wife of Israeli diplomat’s car in New Delhi, India that luckily only wounded 4 people when it exploded. And it wasn’t that long ago when our FBI and DEA disrupted an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the USA by blowing up his favorite restaurant in DC. Funding Iran means funding its terrorism, including terrorism aimed at us right here in the USA.

We also know how incredibly brutal this Iranian regime has been to its own people and exactly how evil they are. There are no secrets here. We watched in horror in 2009 as this same Administration again turned a blind eye to Iranian sponsored terror — this time, as we watched the brave peaceful protestors in Iran be slaughtered and imprisoned by the Mullah’s secret police. And we know that this regime has murdered more than 6,000 people simply for being gay, and has also executed more than 10,000 political prisoners. This regime has provided direct military support and soldiers to an Assad government that has slaughtered at least 100,000 people. This regime regularly denies the Holocaust, while regularly promising to bring about the next slaughter of 6 million Jews.

The Iranian Regime is evil. Pure evil. And this Administration, and its cohorts in appeasement, in France, Britain and Germany, also know the Mullahs are evil.  Our leaders have acknowledged this evil many times. But they excuse it by trotting out the trite claim that you “don’t make peace with your friends.”

The problem with that excuse is that it ignores the fact that appeasing evil never works and it never brings peace. It ensures WAR.

Appeasement means victory for the evil dictator. It consolidates power for them. Before Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” announcement in 1938, Hitler was facing growing dissent in Germany and a Wehrmacht leadership that was worried about the war he was leading them into with a West that they viewed as far to strong militarily for Germany to take on. After Munich, no one in Germany dared to question Hitler, who had by then taken the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. Before the negotiations with John Kerry, Iran was a cash strapped international pariah whose economy was on the brink of collapse. Now, its evil dictators brag to their people how they faced down the West and have restored their honor and economy … the same message Hitler conveyed to the German people in 1938.

Evil dictators are never satisfied with the concessions given to them. Hitler certainly wasn’t satisfied with the Sudetenland — after the appeasers of 1938 offered it to him. Hitler took it and then came back for more. He gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia and then went after Poland. And Iran’s leaders have already told us that they will not be satisfied with our concessions to them. They have repeatedly said that they will not change one iota. Iran’s “Supreme Leader” promised as recently as 5 days ago to continue to fight to achieve Iran’s goal of a world without Israel and America, and to continue to fight for its version of Shiite dominance throughout the Middle East.

That is the other thing about appeasement; it always hurts the appeasers’ allies first. In 1938, it first hurt Czechoslovakia and Poland, but soon enough, it hurt the people of France and Britain too. And that is same thing with this latest act of appeasement. Its first victims will likely be Iran’s neighbors and our allies in the region, but soon enough it will hurt us too. Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads in order to hit Israel or the Sunni Arab States. If we don’t stop this horrible deal, then one day soon (before most of the kids here today even graduate from college), those missiles will be aimed at America and Europe.

It is incredibly sad that in 2015 that the Western world is once again led by people who refuse to truly understand the nature of evil dictatorships and believe that evil can be appeased.

On October 5, 1938, after the collapse of Western fortitude in Munich, Winston Churchill now famously said in the House of Commons:

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

We all know what happened less than one year after Churchill’s speech. It was not the end; it was the beginning of the reckoning. A “bitter cup” known as WWII that led to the loss of over 55 million lives. War was not only made more likely by appeasement, it was made much more costly in terms of blood and treasure. A nuclear Iran will also be much (much) more costly to stop. We must do everything we can to prevent us from once again going down this incredibly dangerous road.

I would like to think that the millions of people that died during WWII did not die in vain and that we have learned something from our past. That we will not sit by quietly and helplessly, while our leaders repeat the mistakes of the past and appease evil dictators whose stated goal once again is to dominate the world and kill millions of Jews. In honor of all of the victims of WWII, I urge each and every one of you to have your voice heard on this most important issue of our time.  We must make sure our leaders know how dangerous this deal is for us and for the entire world. As Churchill said, we “must take our stand for freedom” with “moral health and martial vigor.” We must stand up against this HORRIBLE DEAL as if our lives and the lives of our children depend on it. Because if history has taught us anything, it is that our lives do depend on us getting this right and on us standing up to Iran’s dictators, not appeasing them.