Europe's capitulation to radical Islam is shameful and dismaying. The US president has not concealed his contempt for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's passivity and weakness in the face of Iran, but in fact this is merely the continuation of Europe's long decline, which began in the 19th century, was worn down in World War I, which soaked its soil with the blood of millions, and reached its peak in the 1930s, when the continent's leaders threw up their hands in the face of Hitler.
There is no doubt that Europe's defeatism in the face of Khomeinism abroad and jihadism at home is disappointing, infuriating and dangerous. The weakness of France, Spain and Britain is especially astonishing given their past as empires that conquered and ruled the world. But just as mighty Assyria and Babylon ultimately declined, so too is Europe slowly sinking. Just as glorious powers such as Rome and the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and disintegrated, so the European giants are vanishing before our eyes. Just as the Ottoman Empire, which ruled half the world, fell from greatness, so England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy have lost their standing.
We are so enamored of Europe that our eyes are blind to its decay, which in fact already led to the continent being trampled some 90 years ago by Nazi tanks.
A complacent Europe was blind to Hitler's rise, just as it is blind to the rise of Khomeini and Khamenei. It turned a blind eye to Germany's forbidden rearmament under the Versailles Treaty after World War I, and in 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed a "peace" agreement with Hitler that handed Germany the Sudetenland.
Just as Europe stayed silent in the face of Iran's nuclear buildup, so it kept quiet in an attempt to buy peace and comfort when Hitler annexed Austria. Only when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 did a few begin to awaken, but the lack of preparedness led the former great power to send horses from World War I to the front against German tanks. After that, France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell like dominoes. At the same time, the once-glorious powers of Spain and Portugal declared "neutrality" and in practice collaborated with Nazi Germany, until by 1940 Hitler effectively controlled central and western Europe and his forces were preparing to cross the English Channel on their way to subduing Britain.
Winston Churchill, who in the 1930s insisted on crying out against the growing power of Nazism, was a lone and even ridiculed voice on the world stage, much like the solitary voices of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, who warned against the arming, nuclearization and expansion of the Khomeinist-Islamist monster.
"You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth," Churchill said when Chamberlain and his European counterparts crawled into negotiations with Hitler. Just as we were only weeks or months away from an Iranian nuclear bomb that would have destroyed Israel and subdued Europe, so Britain's new prime minister acted at the time: He fought back, rallied his frightened people through rare charisma, and brought the US into the battle.
President Trump, too, rose to the occasion at the last moment and joined forces with the man who has been sounding the alarm for 40 years, Benjamin Netanyahu, to wage alongside him a war to save the world from Iran.
Had Churchill not acted at the very last minute, Europe would today be Nazi. Now, sadly, Europe has no new Churchill, and its second decline is now more certain than ever. Its addiction to the good life has led it to choose "neutrality" while its great protector for the past 100 years, the US, fights far from its shores. It has also led Europe to shut its eyes to the domestic threat of radical Islam flooding its streets.
Perhaps, following the emerging victory in the war, Europe will awaken and shake itself free, just as the US awoke from the progressivism and dovishness of Clinton, Obama and Biden. If Europeans were to stand up to jihad, it is possible that the great power of the past may yet regain its greatness.
