World Watch Focus: Convincing the World

20060419

The Guardian | The Brussels Journal

     It appears that the world still needs a lot of convincing before it is willing to act decisively against Iran and its ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons. This reality seems to be mostly the result of a world, especially a Western world, that does not want to accept the possibility that there are really forces in the world intent on doing harm to others.

     In fact, this reality is repeatedly demonstrated in the actions of the West throughout its history, as time and time again Western societies have ignored the growing threats of threatening regimes in favor of trying to retain the prevailing complacency of the time.

     Many people are assuredly tired of the comparison of modern Iran to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, however such a comparison is both appropriate and useful. It is appropriate because many of the same factors that turned post World War One Germany into World War Two Nazi Germany exist in Iran, and it is useful because the lessons that led from the rise of Nazism in Germany to World War Two are largely being ignored by the very nations who should have learned those lessons then.

     The appropriate comparison between Germany and Iran lies in the rise and nearly totalitarian power of Shiite Islam in Iran to Nazism in Germany. Both nations were suffering under terrible economic conditions, social dysfunction, and a government that was unable to meet the needs of its people. Those people were looking for rescue, and the radical ayatollahs of Islam offered the solution just as assuredly as the Nazi party did.

     Both groups appealed to the desire of the disenfranchised to belong to something better. Both groups promised salvation for their nations through the embrace of a radical ideology of nationalism and religiosity. Both groups found a scapegoat, ironically the same one, in the form of the Jews. Ultimately, both groups claimed that the salvation of the peoples of their states would come through violently forcing their beliefs on the rest of the world.

     This reality leads to the useful comparison of the lessons that should have been learned by the West from World War Two and should be applied today to Iran. World War Two taught the West that trying to appease despotic dictators into not waging war ultimately fails. World War Two taught the West that ignoring the rise of fanatical ideologies ultimately only means eventually having to fight those ideologies later when they have become very powerful.

     Ultimately, World War Two taught the West that it is, in fact, the duty and solemn right of free nations to defend liberty against the rise of radical and tyrannical movements, wherever they might appear, if not to liberate people suffering under such oppression, then only to protect and preserve their own sovereignty and security.

     Unless the Western world decided to act decisively against Iran, it is destined to learn these lessons again, and this time under the far more painful tutelage of a nation possessed by a radical religious ideology and in possession of a nuclear weapon. This time around, this lesson may require the deaths of millions, and perhaps even the collapse of some Western states, before it is learned.

     Evil does really exist in the world, and sometimes it requires the entire world to face it with resolve and determination. The government and religious radicalism of Iran is the evil that the nations and peoples of the world must face today. There is no doubt that Iran seeks a confrontation with the West. The question is whether the West even cares that such a confrontation is destined to take place.

DLH