Who will stand up?

I apologize in advance, since this particular post references a rather obscure film. But every time I hear the latest news from Iran, I can’t help but think of a 1967 movie called “The Incident.” (Here’s Roger Ebert’s contemporaneous review). In the film, two young hoodlums terrorize people on a cross-town subway car. Nobody wants to confront them and everybody’s willing to keep quiet as long as somebody else is the focus of their violence. In the end, it all becomes too much for a Southern soldier on leave (played by Beau Bridges) and, with one arm in a sling, he subdues the hoods.

Now we have Iran which, in direct defiance of the United Nations and the world, has announced it will develop nuclear weapons. (Or nuclear power, with a huge tongue-in-cheek which then calls for the destruction of Israel). They cannot be reasoned with and, thanks to oil, they can’t be economically subdued. Eventually, Iran may enrich enough uranium for a crude nuclear bomb. Everybody’s secretly praying that the Israelis take care of the problem.

But I fear the world will be as docile as those subway riders, unmindful of Winston Churchill’s adage that “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”