Worms

""Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich. "

That was Hitler’s appraisal of the leaders of Britain and France he hosted in the Bavarian capital in 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had requested the meeting “to find a peaceful solution” to growing tension over Nazi Germany’s grievances and demands.

The outcome: an attempt to appease Hitler through the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor,” Winston Churchill remarked at the time. “They chose dishonor. They will have war.”

In 1972, Munich again was linked to appeasement: Palestinian terrorists massacred 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. The group responsible was guided by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. Nevertheless, Arafat received more encouragement than condemnation: He was invited to address the U.N. where “the question of Palestine” rose to the top of the agenda; it has remained there ever since with no resolution in sight.

Against this backdrop, last weekend I attended the 43rd annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, a gathering of the international political elite: presidents and prime ministers, defense and foreign secretaries, ambassadors, scholars, and journalists from more than 40 countries.

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As for Iran’s nuclear program, he [ Iranian Minister Larijani -ed. ] insisted it is intended only to generate electricity. “We have no intention of aggression against any country,'' he said, sounding offended by the very thought. He added that, on the contrary, “We are a victim of terrorism.” At whose hands, he did not specify.

Larijani sternly set down the rules for those wishing to question him: He was not to be asked about “suspension of uranium enrichment, the Holocaust or Israel.”

Perhaps the sharpest rejoinder came from Sen. Lindsey Graham. “It must have been difficult for you to say what you said,” he told the Iranian official. “Because it was difficult for me to listen.”

Graham observed: “No one who denies the Holocaust can be trusted with nuclear materials.” And he advised Larijani to “Go visit Dachau,” the Nazi concentration camp preserved as a memorial in Munich’s bucolic suburbs; an unintended consequence of the policy of appeasement.

In contrast with Graham and other members of the American delegation — which included also Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl — few European leaders seemed distressed by Larijani. If anything, they congratulated themselves for having invited him to Munich to begin a process of “peace though dialogue.”

As for what Larijani and his fellow Islamist revolutionaries think of their European hosts, one can only surmise. But I suspect it is not too far from the Führer’s appraisal of those he humiliated in Munich nearly 70 years ago."