Someone needs to buy Patrick Murphy a history book.
The Democratic congressman from Florida, who is running for Senate in 2016, came out in support of the Iran deal Monday, unironically declaring the agreement between the world powers and Iran would bring “peace in our time.”
“I believe deeply in the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel,” Murphy said in a statement. “This debate has proven to me that America and Israel are fortunate to have so many passionate, diverse voices who all want the same things: a nuclear-free Iran, a secure Israel, and peace in our time. In the interest of all three, I will be supporting this deal and voting against a Resolution of Disapproval in September.”
The phrase “peace in our time” is most famously — or perhaps infamously — associated with Britain and France’s failed appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany in the lead up to World War II. In 1938, after signing the Munich Agreement that appeased Adolf Hitler by forcing Czechoslovakia to cede to Nazi Germany its Sudetenland territory, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared that the deal would achieve “peace for our time.”
“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor,” he said standing outside of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence. “I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Of course, months later Hitler broke the deal by swallowing up the rest of Czechoslovakia. Less than a year after the deal was signed, Hitler invaded Poland, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Nazi Germany. Instead of “peace for our time,” the world got World War II.
Some conservatives have likened the nuclear deal the U.S. and other world powers negotiated with Iran to the Munich Agreement, arguing that the deal will make a military confrontation with Iran more likely.
“The Obama nuclear agreement with Iran is tragically reminiscent of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement in 1938,” former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz wrote in the Wall Street Journal Friday. “Each was negotiated from a position of weakness by a leader willing to concede nearly everything to appease an ideological dictator. Hitler got Czechoslovakia. The mullahs in Tehran get billions of dollars and a pathway to a nuclear arsenal. Munich led to World War II. The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Whatever you think of the historical analogy, Patrick Murphy just made it a little bit stronger.