Posted on 11/22/2004 5:30:51 PM PST by quidnunc
Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG, has written a blistering attack in the daily WELT against the cowardice of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat. Hartmut Lau translated the article for us.
Europe Thy Name is CowardiceCommentary by Mathias Döpfner
A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe your family name is appeasement." Its a phrase you cant get out of your head because its so terribly true.
Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddams torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush. A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at welt.de ...
What's happening on November 29, 2004? That day is my birthday; it's also the birthday of Gary Shandling, Howier Mandell, and Gina Lee Nolan.
Actually, it's Howie Mandell who has a birthday on 11/29.
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