The birth of a new Hitler

By Carlos Alberto Montaner

A couple of years ago, Sir Winston Churchill's grandson and namesake had the bright idea to collect in a book the key excerpts from 100 of the best speeches by his illustrious forebear. He titled the work "Never Give In!" A bit later, the book was released in Spanish under the title "We Shall Never Surrender!" a phrase from one of Sir Winston's most electrifying addresses to the British people, delivered at a time when London seemed to disintegrate under the impact of German bombs.

It would be very useful for presidents, politicians and diplomats of this new era who did not live through the 20th Century's two World Wars to carefully look at Section III of this work, titled "The Wlderness Years, 1930-39" -- a period during which Churchill was practically isolated within the Conservative Party -- and observe closely the warnings from the British statesman about the Germans' rearmament, Hitler's unstoppable aggressiveness, his repugnant anti-Semitism, and the dangers all that implied for the freedom of Britain and, in general, for the safety of the world.

The timeliness of those writings comes to mind because of Iran. Same as Germany in the 1930s, through democratic procedures, fell in the hands of the crazed Nazis, Iran, also with the blessing of the electorate, today is a dangerous instrument in the hands of Islamic fundamentalism, a country where a fanatical leader named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that nation's brand-new president, impersonates Hitler and leads the planet in the direction of a terrible nuclear catastrophe.

There is a tendency to perceive Iran as a poor and backward Third World country, but that's a mistake. It is a huge nation -- larger than France, Germany, Britain and Italy combined -- with 68 million people and a daily production of four million barrels of crude oil, which permits it to amass a great amount of reserves, given that its trade balance is very favorable.

At the same time, it has a large number of technicians and scientists, educated in fine Western universities, and has within its intellectual, industrial and economic reach the development of nuclear arms, an endeavor in which it has openly engaged, ignoring all calls to good sense made by the international community.

President Ahmadinejad -- with a brazenness we should thank him for, because it leaves no doubt as to his intentions -- has made two statements that are enough to send shivers through everyone. The first is that "Israel must be erased from the map." The second is that "the world must understand that Israel is not Iran's only objective but simply its first."

That's something well known by the Argentines, who suffered a brutal attack in midtown Buenos Aires in 1994, when Iranian services destroyed, with a powerful bomb, the building that housed the Israeli Mutual Aid Association.

It is well known by the people of Israel, Arabs and Jews, who every day suffer attacks perpetrated by suicide bombers financed by Teheran and other capitals.

The issue is very clear: before our distraught eyes, without pause and without truce, one of those nefarious characters who inevitably lead humanity to the slaughterhouse is baring his worst features.

He is a fanatic, convinced that he is destined to change world history and that he carries in his collective memory the ancient grandeur of Persia. He considers himself the victim of God-knows-what strange ancestral offenses.

He champions and defends a sacred cause -- the worldwide reestablishment of the supremacy of Islam -- and gathers the resources to pursue his plans stubbornly and violently. All that's missing is a small square mustache under his nose.

It does not seem reckless to predict what can happen in the Middle East in the foreseable future. An Iran supplied with nuclear weapons, led by a madman like Ahmadinejad, armed with North Korean-made missiles capable of delivering their warheads to practically all the major cities of the area, backed by an army of two million soldiers, will try to conquer its "vital space," its lebensraum, by intimidating its neighbors, as a step prior to its effort to annihilate Israel.

Nor is it difficult to predict the final outcome: Iran will not achieve its final objective, but the destruction wreaked by that conflict will be infinitely greater than that wrought by World War II. If Churchill had been heeded in 1935, when he asked that the Nazis be halted at any cost, humanity would have been spared the deaths of 60 million people and the greatest man-made devastation in recorded history.

It is time to reread his speeches. And, above all, it is time to act.

Source: Firmas Press