Never again?

Hugh Hewitt has a transcript of a chat he had on his radio show with Mark Steyn this week; as usual Steyn is both funny and sobering. Part of the discussion involved the recent "academic" conference in Iran composed of Holocaust-deniers; Steyn notes that it took anti-Semitism to an insane new level: "But to take it beyond that, as Ahmadinejad, so to say, you don't like Jews, but to deny this central event in 20th Century history, I think, is a stage beyond that, because that's not just hatred, that's also a kind of madness."

Steyn then goes on to note how hollow the words "Never again" have become:

HH: Mark Steyn, our friend James Lileks has written, "It'll all make horrible sense in retrospect."

MS: Yes, and I think that's right. I think one of the horrible and contemptible aspects of our generation is that we're posers. You know, after 1945, everybody said never again. It's chiseled on the markers in front of concentration camps all over Europe. Never again. Never again. And we thought those words meant something. And in fact, the never again event turns up all the time. It turns up in Rwanda. It turns up in Darfur. it turns up when we sit by and listen to people like Ahmadinejad pledging to wipe Israel off the face of the map. And we think that that is just like a kind of rhetorical ploy in the opening of negotiations. We don't understand that he does mean it, that he wants a world, and certainly a Middle East, but preferably a world, without Jews. And I think we are morals posers, and these are perhaps the most hollow words of our time, those words, never again.

HH: And as is, I think, increasingly hollow, the support that we had for the Cedar Revolution, as Hezbollah becomes more and more belligerent, and less and less inclined to do anything other than bring down the government of Lebanon.

MS: Yes, and I think there is a...Hezbollah is really a kind of model for the future, that you will have these institutions that prey on weak states, and take over sections of weak states, and yet have all the advantages of not being a state entity with the responsibility that imposes. One of the most disgusting things about this settlement of the Israeli-Hezbollah war, as it was, is that you had the U.N., and you have European nations, and other nations effectively treating Hezbollah as a quasi-state entity. And who's fault is that? I mean, the U.N. gave the PLO, a terrorist organization, a seat at the United Nations. In a sense, we have made this rod for our own back.

An Iranian terrorist group is in the process of destroying a democratic country, while at the same time the Iranian government denies the original Holocaust even as it sets out to create a new Holocaust - this time with the benefit of nuclear weapons. And the world does...nothing. "Never again" could well become, "Ok, never never again - we really mean it this time - honest".