Bill Bennett: “we have heard on this floor and in the popular media that the main reason we are at war is because ``diplomacy has…”

“we have heard on this floor and in the popular media that the main reason we are at war is because ``diplomacy has failed,'' and there are those who have attacked the President for his ``failure'' in diplomacy. We also hear that polls are running heavily against the war. My mind goes back to a somewhat similar situation in Great Britain when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich and said, ``We have established peace in our time.'' He referred to the Czechs, whose country he gave to Adolf Hitler in this fashion: Why should we consider people who live in a land far away and with whom we have little or nothing to do? Winston Churchill opposed the treaty that Neville Chamberlain brought home from Munich. He offered stirring rhetoric, saying, ``We have suffered a defeat of the first magnitude.'' That stirred my soul as a young schoolchild reading about it. What I didn't realize until I became an adult is that Winston Churchill got only three votes, as Parliament overwhelmingly endorsed Chamberlain. And the popular polls, as I say, made Chamberlain the most popular politician in Great Britain, and maybe in all of Europe. Of course, within 2 years, we found that Winston Churchill was right and Chamberlain went off to historical disgrace. The Munich example is not exactly analogous to this situation. No historical situation is exactly analogous to a current circumstance, but it is one we should keep in mind as we hear rhetoric saying that diplomacy has failed.”