I was fixing dinner. Rose was reading about World War II, telling me of various revelations ... Hitler said that he was on tenterhooks during the first 48 hours after invading the Rhineland because if France had moved to stop him, Germany would have had to retreat ... Goebels said that if the authorities had moved against the Brown Shirts in the early days the Nazis never could have regrouped and regained their power ... and so on. She was struck by the fact that because people failed to step up and do the right thing, all the destruction and evil of WWII had happened. We then wondered how many similar tragedies had been averted that we never would know about ... simply because people had stepped forward to do the right thing when it didn't seem as if it would matter.
Later, she suddenly looked up from her book and said that she was struck by the connection between Hitler and Saddam Hussein. "What the????," I elegantly replied. Rose had just read that after the final treaties of the war, democratic leaders everywhere vowed they would never appease another ruthless dictator. She said, "That is just the way Saddam Hussein was doing things ... like Hitler ... the Rhineland, Austria ... a little here, a little there to see what everyone would put up with. We were appeasing him until we sent troops in."
It's not an exactly similar situation and no doubt greater minds than ours have already seen this connection ... but in our kitchen, that light bulb went on and we wondered if this was one of those situations where a huge tragedy was averted by doing the right thing when it didn't seem as if it would matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment