Is America the 1930s France?

Thomas Sowell sees parallels between France pre-war and America pre-nuclearized Iran. It’s a point I made earlier this month regarding Iran and al-Qaeda winning in Iraq.

Here are Sowell’s parallels:

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them. Winston Churchill later said, "There was never a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action." In 1936, when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, France was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention.

The French had the means but not the will. "Moral paralysis" came from the death of a million French soldiers in the First World War . . . Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions. As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: "France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core."

Is America today the France of yesterday? We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons . . .The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don't think we have the guts to stop them. [Iran,] one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world. . . has no need for nuclear power to generate electricity. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and its international terrorist allies will be a worst threat than Hitler ever was. But, before that happens, the big question is: Are we France? Are we morally paralyzed, perhaps fatally?