And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, Editor Emeritus

... that the day after Iran and six nations, including the United States, had “agreed” on a framework governing Iran’s nuclear future, it became obvious they did not agree on what had been agreed upon.
So, here we go again, I thought, proving that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
I am reading Maury Klein’s book, A Call to Arms, subtitled Mobilizing America for World War II. It was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Press. I am up to 1941, past 1940, which he calls the year of denial.
The resemblance to the present day is uncanny. The foe at that time was Hitler and Germany. The U.S. was greatly divided on whether or not war was imminent. There were efforts by eventual allies to allay that fear. I fear our Secretary of State John Kerry is reprising the role of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain in championing what turned out to be a vain effort at appeasement. Others were sure that wouldn’t work. President Roosevelt was among them. He is quoted as follows, substituting radical Islam for the Nazis: “The experience of the past years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease (radical Islam.) Man cannot turn a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. A nation can have peace with (radical Islam) only at the price of surrender.”
President Obama noted hopefully that if things go wrong, the U.S. could win any war, because of superior military might. That proved true in WWII, but war is different today. Enemies wore uniforms and fought as armies then. Today, radical Islam’s disease has metastasized into many places in the world, including the U.S., and its armies are in mufti and the battlefields are chosen for secrecy.
What President Obama has been saying marks the success of the talks is almost exactly word-for-word what President Bill Clinton said after the agreement with North Korea on nuclear relations in 1994. How prescient was that? Ten years later North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb!
Who knows what war might look like today. The majority of the residents of the U.S. don’t know what a full-scale war is like. We tied in Korea and lost in Vietnam, and except for those servicemen killed and their families, things went on pretty much as usual for most of us.
It was different in WWII. Many weekend nights, with nothing of interest to me on TV, I will go to my room and listen to old-time radio shows on Wisconsin Public Radio. There are reminders. Easter night, listeners to an April, 1943 broadcast of Jack Benny were reminded that up to 16 red ration stamps could be used to purchase meat the next week. There were no ration stamps needed for that Easter ham this year. And in case listeners couldn’t make a meat purchase, they were reminded that Grape Nuts Flakes were high in protein and could replace meat in a diet, and no ration stamps were required for purchase.
How is your tolerance for that kind of war, and what is your preference for avoidance?