The American Spectator

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Facing the Enemy

10.20.06 @ 12:01AM

CLASS ACTS
Re: Jeffrey Lord's The Ex-Ambassador From Jurassic Park:

To Jeffrey Lord's list of men of physical courage who nevertheless failed to understand the nature of the enemy might be added the British Statesman Lord Halifax, who, though his reputation as an appeaser is exaggerated by some, certainly failed to understand Hitler and tried to negotiate up to the last possible minute.

Halifax was no physical coward. He has served as a combat soldier in World War I despite having a weak heart and despite being born with a withered arm and missing hand - men have had movies made about them for doing less.

Neville Chamberlain himself was also no coward. In the second volume of his war memoirs Sir Winston Churchill emphasizes his bravery, after he had resigned as Prime Minister, during the bombing of London and his refusal to quit his duties then. He climbed over smoking bomb-rubble to his office each day despite the fact he had been politically humiliated (Churchill, his most trenchant critic was now his chief) but more fundamentally despite the fact that he was dying of a particularly painful form of cancer. "Fortitude of Mr. Chamberlain" is a chapter sub-heading of Churchill's book, and when he died Churchill, always moved by heroism, is said to have wept at his grave.
-- Hal G.P. Colebatch

Magnificent article. I'm a class of '58 guy, so did my government service in the US Marine Corps. (Fighter/attack pilot in the old Pappy Boyington Black Sheep Squadron, VMA-214.) My wife and I now live in SW France much of each year and find there very pro-American points of view which do not seem to penetrate Paris, the Upper Westside of NYC, nor most of California. As the leading Grande Dame of our village once said to me, "Kenneth, you must understand, Paris is not part of France. It is, in fact, the capitulation capital of all Europe. When the Germans attacked, Paris surrendered in five days; we here fought the bastards for five years." As many of the French far from the capital feel Paris is not part of their country, I suspect many Americans feel academia is not a part of America either.
-- Ken McAdams

I happened to read James Taranto's piece on Mr. Jett's op-ed. I enjoyed it much, as I do most of Mr. Taranto's humor. But, Mr. Lord's analysis and debunking of Mr. Jett's feckless political nonsense is ever better. Mr. Lord presented a fact-based rebuttal that was at once humorous and ruthlessly insightful. Mr. Lord's reference to famous defeatists like McClellan, Lindbergh, McGovern, Chamberlain and Laval was very good. Mr. Lord's recounting of the sequence of events in the early to mid-1930s was truthful and accurate. Finally, Mr. Lord's analysis and rejection of the notion that foreigners have more knowledge and better judgment about history and world affairs than American statesmen was excellent.

Very Good!
-- Doug Santo
Pasadena, California

Mr. Lord's writing helps to relieve much anxiety and give great comfort. It is good to know that such a brilliant mind as his is on the side of the "good guys."
-- Jim Jackson

When Jeffrey Lord was a White House "political director" the existential threat to America consisted in roughly four Soviet thermonuclear warheads or atomic bombs for every county in the nation. When Jeffery Lord was an infant, it consisted in Axis forces comprising millions of troops, and thousands of ships and warplanes of a tripartite alliance supported by colonial resources captured from several of the greatest empires the world has ever known, and one of the nations in that axis being the acknowledged technological superior of Great Britain.

Along comes a senior diplomat with service on three continents to remind us of the difference between that constellation of forces and nineteen fanatics with box cutters throwing one hell of a sucker punch at our less than vigilant nation. What does Mr. Lord do that Ronald Reagan did not? Adduce the lesser present danger posed not by a national leader, but a man without a country reviled by most of his own coreligionists as a justification for a greater diminution of liberty than the late President would ever propose or tolerate.

This really will not do, for the impression of invincible innumeracy conveyed by Mr. Lord's first few hundred words is merely confirmed by the pages of self-justification that follow. Others have made Ambassador Jett's case more cogently, but this is the weakest, longest, and least compelling defense of a bad historical analogy I have seen so far this year.
-- Russell Seitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jeffrey Lord replies:
Many thanks to Russell Seitz for illustrating precisely the problem with the modern American Left. Says Mr. Seitz: "When Jeffrey Lord was an infant, it ['the existential threat to America,' as Seitz phrases it] consisted in Axis forces comprising millions of troops, and thousands of ships and warplanes of a tripartite alliance supported by colonial resources captured from several of the greatest empires the world has ever known, and one of the nations in that axis being the acknowledged technological superior of Great Britain."

The question, Mr. Seitz, is just how did all of what you describe materialize in the first place when at its core was one lone imprisoned Austrian corporal who was quite decidedly mad? Winston Churchill spent an entire decade pleading with his fellow Englishmen to stop Germany from becoming, as you describe, Great Britain's technological superior. As the record tellingly shows, he was rebuffed over and over again.

The decided split between Americans in this election is between people who, figuratively, would dine on McDonald's and cigars every meal for years and wonder why they "suddenly" have both heart disease and lung cancer, and those who believe exercise and a proper diet are the key to good health and the prevention of very bad things physical.

The only way to stop 19 fanatics with box cutters on a plane from becoming a government selling or handing off nuclear weapons to terrorists is to stop the fledgling Hitlers in their tracks. Whatever will unfold in our future, Saddam Hussein will not have nuclear weapons. Having followed liberal sentiments through the graces of the Clinton/Carter psychology in North Korea, all the rest of us must now face the consequences.

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