Dealing With The Unthinkable

As a history buff, I have heard it said over the years that American and western Europe were horrible in that they did not respond quickly enough to stop what Hitler was doing in the concentration camps.  I would like to address that and to relate it to something that is happening now.  Beginning in 1933, Hitler set out to rid Germany of its Jewish population.  Dachau opened in March of 1933, originally used for political opponents,  The first death camp opened in 1941 and the five other Polish death camps began operating in 1942.  Although it would have been impossible for the immediate neighbors of these camps not to know what was going on there, I also believe it would have been impossible for them to do anything about it.  By 1941 Hitler had so consolidated his power that to oppose him in any way meant death.  But let’s widen the picture.  I am not sure anyone in Europe or the United States believed the stories that were coming out of Germany.  There are some things we just don’t want to believe that people are capable of.  That is not an excuse–it’s just a fact.

Today we are listening to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ on a fairly regular basis.  We are watching as he plays cat and mouse with the UN in hiding his nuclear program–claiming he only wants peaceful nuclear energy.  We are seeing rocket testing in his country for longer range rockets as he continues to claim that he is only building up his military for defensive purposes.  At some point (probably within three years) this man will have nuclear weapons.  It is unthinkable to the average American that he would use them.  We also need to remember that by the time he obtains a nuclear weapon, he may have the rocket technology to deliver that weapon (or weapons) anywhere in the world.  American, in his mind, is ‘the great satan’; Israel is ‘the little satan’.  We have no reason to believe that if he is capable of launching a nuclear weapon against us, he will not hesitate to do so. 

America has had nuclear weapons for more than fifty years, and we have only used them once–to end a war.  We inflicted massive civilian casualties, but saved many lives by taking away the need for a land invasion of Japan, which would have caused even more death and hardship.  Anyway, my point is this.  Are we reacting to the threat of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran the same way we reacted to the initial reports of the concentration camps?  Is the thought so horrible that we are in denial?