History Lessons

Never mind Osama, here’s Neville

When I was in eighth grade, there was a question on my American History final exam that read, “Who was the person most responsible for starting World War II?” The answer the teacher was looking for was, of course, Adolf Hitler. I wrote Neville Chamberlain.

If Don Rumsfeld had been grading it instead of Mr. Peters, I’d have got it right.

In Salt Lake City yesterday, Rumsfeld called all of us who oppose the war in Iraq, in effect, “Chamberlains”.

If that’s right, I guess Rummy must think of himself as Winston Churchill, who did, after all, have it completely right about Hitler while Chamberlain was acquiesing while Germany took over Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Of course, when Churchill did come to power, he didn’t advocate starting a war with, say, Equador, to name one country which had nothing to do with attacking Czechoslovakia or Poland.

Franklin Roosevelt, on December 8, 1941, didn’t call for a declaration of war against Mexico after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

It’s as if Rummy got the same question I did: “Who was the person most responsible for starting the current war?” and he got it totally wrong, too.