John Derbyshire on "The Calculus of Appeasement"

On the National Review Online homepage, this article is entitled "Britain will do a Spain. I am sure of it." A sample:

I don’t mean to imply that the British are mean or cowardly. If a man seeks to steal my car, burn my house, and assault my wife, it would indeed be cowardly of me to appease him; but if a man shows up to break a couple of my windows every third or fourth year, he is just a nuisance, not a threat, and there would be nothing dishonorable in paying him off for a few hundred dollars, if the law could not help me. Back in the 1930s, many English people thought that appeasing the kaiser in 1914 would have been a wiser policy that rushing to the aid of Belgium, and would have saved the nation from a ghastly catastrophe and millions dead and maimed. Some respectable historians agree. When Hitler showed up, appeasement was therefore the natural response. It might have worked, if Hitler had not been Hitler. However, no English person of today thinks that Osama bin Laden is Hitler. Appeasement of the jihadists is a rational course of action.

Is it the correct course of action? I don’t myself believe it is. I believe that weapons of mass destruction alter the old logic, in ways that not many people outside America — and not a very satisfactory number inside, come to think of it — have thought through. I support the war on terror; would, in fact, support a much more vigorous and ruthless one.

Make sure to follow the link in the passage just quoted.