Acts of Submission By Jeffrey Lord

Acts of Submission
The American Spectator
By Jeffrey Lord

The term was Winston Churchill's description of the different methods that had been employed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his supporters to appease Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1930's. Chamberlain was appeasing, Churchill said, "in the hope that by great and far-reaching acts of submission, not merely in sentiment and pride, but in material matters, peace may be preserved." He went on to warn, correctly, of just how foolish -- and -- dangerous this would be to England….

So the line was set. Surrender was to be the main foreign policy position of the Democratic Party, and coming in a close second would be an emphasis that American foreign policy was a criminal enterprise.

FOLLOW THE THREAD OF word and deed from leading Democrats since 1968. It isn't hard to see a philosophy of appeasement at work. They would easily fit Churchill's definition of "acts of submission, not merely in pride and sentiment, but in material matters."

* 1968 -- Minority Plank defeated at Democratic Convention calls for withdrawal from Vietnam.

* 1971 -- A young John Kerry testifies to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "we cannot fight Communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now." He goes on to accuse his fellow soldiers of a long list of "war crimes."

* 1972 -- Senator George McGovern proposes unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam.

* 1975 -- Democratic Congress ends funding of Vietnam War, American troops leave Southeast Asia. Years later Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program reports that between 1975-1979 1.7 million people were murdered, 21% of the Cambodian population. A Senate Committee headed by Democrat Frank Church of Idaho investigates the CIA, an investigation described by then-President Gerald Ford as "sensational and irresponsible." Others charge Church with crippling the agency.

* 1977 -- President Jimmy Carter, safely elected after campaigning as an Annapolis graduate/Navy officer, tells America it has an "inordinate fear of communism." While the Cambodian genocide proceeds, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and set up a puppet regime in Nicaragua. American hostages are held in Iran for over a year. Carter cuts the defense budget so badly that Reagan's incoming Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger recalled not being "entirely over [the] shock at the weaknesses in our own military capability" Carter had left behind.

*1983 -- New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro joins the Democratic chorus opposing President Ronald Reagan's decision to send troops to Grenada. In spite of Reagan's rescue of American medical students and halting a Communist takeover, she charges, according to the New York Times, that it was "an inappropriate and precipitous use of military force." A year later Ms. Ferraro becomes the Democratic nominee for Vice-President. Her chief foreign policy adviser, according to the Times, is future Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

* 1983 -- Senator Edward Kennedy leads Democrats in disparaging Reagan's idea of shooting down nuclear tipped missiles from space as "Star Wars" -- fighting a system that only this year was invoked as a way to save the West Coast of the United States from a North Korean missile attack.

*1984 -- Walter Mondale campaigns for president on the idea that America should have a "nuclear freeze" with the Soviets. He vows to stop the "illegal war" in Nicaragua "in my first hundred days," accuses Reagan of wanting to "turn the heavens into a battleground," and ginning up an "arms race" with the Soviets. Dismissing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, Central America and Communist treatment of Jewish dissidents, Mondale pleads for arms control. The concept of victory and ending the Cold War is never discussed.

* 1985 -- Reykjavik Summit: When Reagan walks away from a bad deal he is sharply criticized by Democratic Congressman Ed Markey for giving up "a chance to cash in on Star Wars" by refusing to trade away the entire SDI program. Later, it is this refusal that is credited with winning the Cold War.

*1988 -- Michael Dukakis runs for president opposing efforts to defeat the Communist government of Nicaragua, saying his election would not be about "overthrowing governments in Central America."

* 1991 -- By a five-vote margin the Democratic-controlled Senate votes to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after he invaded the country. The majority of Democrats vote no. This includes now-Senator John Kerry, who said the U.S. was "once again willing to risk people dying from a mistake."

For five decades now, beginning with that hot August Chicago night in 1968, the modern Democratic Party has adopted the attitude, philosophy, policy and practices of appeasement. All of this -- and much more -- was well before Bill Clinton even got near the Oval Office. An office he won only when Americans understood the Cold War was finally over, believing that there were no serious threats on the horizon. Only then did a modern Democrat once again live in the White House.

In context, with this history, it just isn't hard to understand why so many Americans don't buy Clinton's defense of his failure to get Osama bin Ladin. It's also why the demands to "get out of Iraq" from Democrats, combined with impeachment threats, are increasingly understood as just the latest in a very long -- and now self-evidently very dangerous -- pattern.

A pattern of acts of submission. Jeffrey Lord

Note: This week's antics by John Kerry impel me to extend a note of thanks once again to the Swift Boat Veterans whose courage and determination shed so much light on the lies of Kerry's record and undid some of the foul character assassination he committed on Vietnam veterans to gain the backing of leftwing groups. By the way, we are still waiting for Kerry's military records that were to be released immediately in 2004.