Until Hitler was ready to launch a major attack, he bought time.
First, internally, he built the infrastructure. As years went by and segments of the population started being concerned with the direction of things with his Hitler Youth and his Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (personal bodyguard regiment), the world thought that perhaps things would change in Germany. But not only that nothing happened, Europe looked for ways to appease him. First, it was with the Munich Pact, where the British, French and Italians handed parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938. Then in 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-agression treaty.
Initially Germany invaded Poland, still in 1939.
...And in 1940 and 1941 all the wishful thinking and acting came apart when Hitler started his invasions in the Western and Eastern front.
Fast forward 70 years, and I will just make some "slight" changes to the above paragraphs....
Until Ahmedinajad was ready to launch a major attack, he bought time.
First, internally, he built the infrastructure. As years went by and segments of the population started being concerned with the direction of things with his Basij and his Revolutionary Guard, the world thought that perhaps things would change in Iran. But not only that nothing happened, the world looked for ways to appease him. First, it was with the 5+1 Nuclear negotiations, where the Americans, Chinese, Russians, British, French and Germans extended month after month deadlines for Iran to comply with the international requirements to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. In addition to that, different countries started making individual agreements with Iran, as a way to ensure that economic sanctions would not affect the Iranian regime.
Initially Iran invaded Iraq, still in 2009 (in fact today, as I write these lines).
...And in 2010 and 2011 all the wishful thinking and acting came apart when Ahmedinajad.......
Wait a minute.... we are still in 2009. There's still time to avoid history to repeat itself all the way....
2 comments:
I very much hope you are wrong about this, Max. However, your comparison is scary. How much of an army does Ahmadinejad have, though? And how much can he rely on his increasingly restive population?
Valorie, I too hope I am wrong, but what should we do? Wait, or take some action before it's too late? Here's the answer to your question about his army: the army itself has 950,000 people, not counting police forces. The Basij membership numbers vary according to different accounts between 3 and 12 million. So you can see that not only the comparison that I mention is scary, but those numbers are scary as well. Remember also that just this week - at the same time that the world keeps talking about negotiations - Ahmedinajad successfully completed a test of his Sejil-2 missile, that has a 2,000-kilometre range, meaning that Israel and large parts of southeastern Europe are now within range.
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