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Standing up for appeasement: Alexander Rose argues that appeasement is a mark of civilization--it just doesn''t work against enemies who don''t share your values.

Article Excerpt
THE URGE to appease others--especially our enemies--is, perhaps, the noblest sentiment to which we can aspire. Indeed, the very idea of appeasement is the high-water mark of civilization, the triumph of Reason and Manners over a savage, fanatical state of barbarism.

The practice of appeasement has, of course, a checkered legacy. Calling someone an "appeaser" is a dreadful insult, one implying, faint-heartedness, limp-wristedness, lily-liveredness, and all the rest. This unfortunate reputation arises from the formal "policy" of appeasement, exemplified by Neville Chamberlain--the pre-World War II Conservative prime minister forever doomed to be mocked as a weak, naive fool--in which he attempted to placate Nazi Germany with concessions. Appeasement s dismal performance at Munich in 1938, when Chamberlain sold the Czechs down the river in his, at the time wildly popular, attempt to sate Hitler's insatiable demands, provided an essential Cold War axiom. When it came to the Soviets (now replaced by the Chinese), thundered hawks and anti-communists, the "Lesson of Munich" was clear: Always stand up to tyrants, for if you yield, they will demand more and more until, finally, there is no option but full-scale war. As Jefferson counseled, it is an "eternal truth that acquiescenc e under insult is not the way to escape war.

Appeasement's reputation suffered yet another blow in the aftermath of September 11. The Chomskyite left, earnestly huddled around the office water-cooler at the Nation, tried hard to find a reason, any reason, to avoid waging war against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The palaeo-lefi sought to shift the...

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