From Davids Medienkritic, a terrific site which provides translations from the German (mostly) press, we have a translation of an attack by Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, against the cowardice of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat. From the daily Welt:

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe — your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non—Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self—righteousness of the peace—movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Alex

Thomas Lifson   12 7 04