It’s hard to watch events in 2014 without noticing significant similarities between the pre-WW II Nazi movement and today’s radical Islamic organizations (jihadists). Let me list these similarities:

• Post WW I and post WW II decisions by victorious powers planted the seeds of national discontent.

• The Ba’athist Party of Bashar al-Assad (Syria) and Saddam Hussein (Iraq) has direct political links to the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler.

• Many Americans don’t know that before WW II large Nazi rallies were held in major U.S. cities by the German-American Bund. In the ‘30s the Germans were aggrieved victims of the Treaty of Versailles. Now the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tells us that the Palestinians are aggrieved victims. Jews are portrayed as the boogeyman by both.

• Neither Nazis nor jihadists believe in democracy. Both believe in terror. Both Nazis and jihadists would exterminate Jews.

• The American government was notably ambivalent concerning the Nazi’s hatred of Jews. Today, the U.S. tries to be the intermediary between Hamas and Israel.

• Both Nazis and Jihadists consider the West decadent and weak.

Thank God there will never be an exact match between the Nazi era and any subsequent era. There are significant differences between those eras:

• Jews will not go meekly again to their oblivion. If threatened, Israel will defend itself with whatever is needed for survival to include employing Israeli nuclear weapons.

• We now know that about six million Jews were killed systematically by the Nazis in gas chambers, concentration camps, and at random throughout Eastern Europe. Today, only jihadists and a few ignorant people in the West doubt the Holocaust.

If the similarities between the 1930s and today are valid, what should we do to avoid repeating history? Obviously, if Britain and France had reacted even as late as 1938, when Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia, the subsequent history of the U.S. would have been very different. Perhaps, my father might not have fought on Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and Iwo Jima.

Contrary to academic theorists, who counsel reasonableness and even-handedness on our part to counter the radical policies of our potential opponents, we should take what the jihadists say about themselves and their aims as observed truth. If somebody says, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and jihadists say today, that they hate Judaism, we should believe them and take appropriate military action. We’ll either fight them now when they’re weak or we’ll fight them in our cities in the future when they’re strong.

In my opinion, President Obama is the current Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who gave away Czechoslovakia in 1938. Obama demonstrated that resemblance repeatedly in 2014. First imaginary “red lines” in Syria and inaction regarding Crimea, Iraq, Gaza, and Iran has made America seem today as impotent as the West seemed before WW-II. Iran will have a nuclear weapon within months as well as a missile delivery system.

It’s time for American leaders to get tough. Weakness invites aggression.

That’s been true for our entire human history. President Obama does not understand this. Let’s pray that the world does not ignite in the remaining two years under Obama.

 

Michael Waldron is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, who was born and raised in Niles. He previously served on the Niles Community School Board of Education. He can be reached at ml.waldron61@gmail.com.