“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
― Winston S. Churchill

As about 30 rockets crashed down on joint U.S.-Iraqi bases last week where an American contractor was killed and several U.S. and Iraqi troops were wounded, Americans were still ignorant that this is what happens when you appease terrorists. 

And yet, social media is chockfull of citizens and politicians, with their hate for the sitting president so intense, that they blame him for escalating the violence with Iran instead of placing it where it belongs: with the government of Iran. 

It is shocking that Americans are lamenting the death of a terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of your own countrymen as well as thousands of people across the region. “We don’t want to go to war with Iran!” was the prevailing attitude across social media. That is a sane and logical argument. No one in the U.S. WANTS to go to war with Iran. But sorry folks, Iran has been at war with you for 40 years and it is time to wake up. 

Since the Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took American diplomats hostages, the die had been cast. The Marine Corps barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 was an Iranian sponsored operation. Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, both Iranian proxies, were implicated in the attack. 

In the late 1980s, the Iranians began attacking commercial shipping in the Gulf but that foray was put down by the U.S. Navy.

For years the U.S. government has stated that Iran is the world’s leading supporter of terrorism; Iran’s support of terror groups continues unabated.

And then came the enormously stupid Iran nuclear deal by which the United States appeased the Iranians. They got them to agree not to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting some sanctions, which translated into more funds for Tehran’s covert ops in the region — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Houthi rebels in Yemen…the list goes on.

As this was ongoing the U.S. current administration imposed severe sanctions on the Iranians. But the Europeans tried to circumvent the sanctions by creating the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX). In a recent piece in National Review, it was stated that INSTEX was founded by the U.K., France, and Germany and it was a way to skirt the sanctions of the U.S. and still do business with the country bent on their destruction. 

Any thoughts on “Iranian moderates” coming to the forefront was put to rest in November when peaceful protests against the Iranian government were brutally put down with over 1,500 citizens killed by Iranian security forces. About 7,000 more were arrested.

But European leaders and businessmen wanted to keep the Iran deal alive and do business with a regime that supports global terror and threatens the West and the very countries trying to profit from that appeasement, all the while providing cash for its terrorist proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and everywhere else the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates.

Iranian proxy militias were ostensibly in Iraq fighting ISIS, which the United States and other coalition forces are also doing. But yet, for months, these proxy militias have been attacking bases, in which U.S. troops are stationed at, with rocket and mortar fire. Finally, after an American was killed, the U.S. had enough and conducted airstrikes on these Iranian proxy militias in Iraq and Syria. 

But Qassem Soleimani wasn’t deterred. He ordered the attack on the U.S. Embassy, which is essentially U.S. soil. The intent was to take more hostages, but the appeasers would still have you believe that Trump caused the escalation and is driving us toward war. 

The Iranians watch and monitor the internet just as they shut down their own during the protests in November. They read the posts that Americans make and play upon them. So, the Iranian government posted a comment on Twitter from their foreign minister, “Iran took and concluded ‘proportionate measures’ …we don’t want escalation or war.” And many Americans lapped it up. 

So, they’ve fired on our bases in Iraq for about a dozen times in the past few months, tried to storm the U.S. Embassy (again) and now fired 15 more missiles at the joint American/Iraqi base outside Baghdad and at others. But the U.S. is escalating the violence? Social media again raced to appease the Iranians. “If this is their response, and no one was killed (this time), let them have their moment” was the prevailing attitude. 

Appeasement doesn’t work with tyrants and terrorist nations. They view it only as weakness: it invites more attacks, not less. After 40 years, one would think that the people of America and Europe would learn. 

Going back 81 years ago, Neville Chamberlain arrived in Britain waving a worthless piece of paper, proclaiming “peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” Britain and France had appeased Hitler by giving him a large chunk of Czechoslovakia in order to avert war.

Chamberlain’s words were immediately challenged by his critic in Parliament, Winston Churchill, who declared, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” A year later World War II erupted. 

If you keep appeasing the wolf at the door, sooner or later it is bound to break it down.