Fairly Symmetrical

Why is Europe still so hung up on appeasement? How is it possible that they missed the lessons Hitler taught about appeasing an enemy? Does it have anything to do with their historic desire for consensus?

These questions brought to you by an interview with an Israeli woman I saw on Andrew Sullivan's page.

Looked at one way, I suppose it does make some sense that countries with large populations of vocal Muslims would rather try to appease the Palestinians -- at the relatively cheap cost (to them, of course) of Israeli lives than they would risk angering people already in their country. Looked at another way, what precisely would the French, for instance, do if the Palestinians did manage to get everything they wanted through terrorist tactics? Is that really a lesson they want to teach anyone? I think this is just a weakness of democracies, unfortunately -- elected politicians do better solving immediate problems (calming rioting subcultures) than they do avoiding long-term, nebulous future problems (what happens when terrorism is really validated as an effective "negotiation" strategy). Aside from just "wanting to do the best job they can" they really don't even have any incentive to try to avoid those future problems.