"Going to war without the French is like going deerhunting without an accordion."

Read the rest of Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren's column containing that brutal zinger here.

OK, here's a little more:

As wise old Alistair Cooke said on Britain's BBC, we're hearing an old song from the 1930s. "Most historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is different and it turns out to be the crucial one. It may well be so here. All I know is that all the voices of the thirties are echoing through 2003."

This is the fact. The appeasers of Saddam have used the same arguments and the same language as the appeasers of Hitler. They have relied on the same fundamental reasoning -- that there is no price too high, if we can win "peace in our time" -- and under the same inspiration, a pant-wetting fear. They want to believe, in the face of any evidence that is presented to them, that security can be obtained by some kind of negotiation. They chant all the old 'thirties mantras about "collective security", and invoke the United Nations as their grandfathers invoked the League of Nations.