At the National Review – Online Rich Lowry weighs in that the all important prelude to the WWII re-enactment drama is under way. He points out that the Spanish Civil War was the prelude in 1936 to the original WWII.
The current conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians, as Thomas Friedman pointed out in the New York Times a few weeks ago, raises another imperfect, but still telling historical analogy — the Spanish Civil War.
He has a valid point I think when he writes:
today’s war in the West Bank and Israel is a rehearsal for the struggle over the future of the Middle East, between Arab rejectionism and American power, between terrorism and a more realistic Arab politics.
Has he been reading my blogs about the coming struggle having so many parallels to the original WWII?
As in the Spanish Civil War, the side portrayed by the elite and the Left as the virtuous Davids staring down a brutal Goliath is tainted with a ruthless political ideology and cynical violence. It took decades, and the recent publication of Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, to demonstrate that the idealistic leftist fighters in the Spanish Civil War were the pawns of a brutal Soviet policy. The evidence in the current case is much more immediate and undeniable: To see that the Palestinians are beholden to hideous political ideology you need look no further than the doctrines of Hamas; to see how the Palestinian cause been captured by the romance of violence you need look no further than the Al Aqsa Brigades; to see that the intifada is a tool in a much larger geopolitical game you need do nothing more than follow the money back to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Sadly, the re-enactment rehearsals continue apace.
