Mental Path to Appeasement

Tony Blankely on Appeasing Iran:

In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something -- even if they know it is futile.

This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in 1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.

That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?