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Europe's Cowardice in the Face of Enemy Fire

(Die Welt/Times-UK) Mathias Dopfner - * The writer Henryk Broder recently issued a withering indictment: Europe, your family name is appeasement. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as Britain and France negotiated and hesitated too long before they realized Adolf Hitler needed to be fought and defeated, because he could not be bound by toothless agreements. * Later, appeasement legitimized and stabilized communism in the Soviet Union, in East Germany, and then throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, where for decades inhuman, repressive, and murderous governments were glorified. * Europe still hasn't learned. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement often seems to countenance suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. * Today we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in the Netherlands, Britain, and elsewhere in Europe? By suggesting that the proper response to such barbarism is to initiate a Muslim holiday in Germany. * We find ourselves faced with a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military clashes of the last century, a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation because it is spurred on by such gestures. Such responses have proven to be signs of weakness. The writer is chief executive of the German media group Axel Springer.
2005-08-09 00:00:00
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