Those poor people! They little know what they will have to face.” So lamented an anguished Winston Churchill as he witnessed his reveling fellow citizens, unaware of pending disasters, at the time of the Munich Crisis in 1938. It was an age when the British government was pursuing a perilous course in national affairs–a course Churchill wisely judged to be wrong.

In witnessing our own government’s policy of intervention in Iraq, one is drawn in this election year to recall the agonizing trial of Winston Churchill and the British people in the 1930s. There are times when a government can take an egregiously wrong course in guiding a nation’s affairs. In such times it is left to the people in a democracy to correct their nation’s course.

The most frequently cited lesson of Munich is that one should not appease dictators. Indeed, the folly of appeasement in that instance must ever be remembered. But in the Munich experience there are embedded other, more overarching, lessons as well. Leaders, for instance, can simplistically fail to understand the uniqueness of their time.

Such a failure is precisely what helped to lead Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain astray and into his policy of appeasement. Looking to 1914 and the origins of the First World War, he assessed Hitler as being somewhat similar to the generally good-willed European leaders of that earlier time, leaders not bent on war or world domination. He failed to comprehend the uniqueness of Hitler, and from this failure his pursuit of appeasement followed.

Having chosen his course, Chamberlain held to it with a faith and fervor that enabled him to dispense with all evidence to the contrary: Hitler’s rearmament, the Wehrmacht’s entry into the Rhineland, the taking of Austria. Even Hitler’s threat in September 1938 to take part of Czechoslovakia did not deter a prime minister ever certain of his course. Churchill, out of power, urged his government to change course, to arm and to hedge in Hitler through collective security. (Yes, even in the face of such a despicable dictator as Adolf Hitler, Churchill did not advocate a policy of intervention.)

Chamberlain retained his stay-the-course attitude. “My mission,” he revealingly termed his flight to meet with Hitler in Munich that September. Having sold out the Czechs as the price of agreement with the Nazi leader, Chamberlain returned to a relieved nation and to deliriously cheering crowds. With umbrella in one hand and Hitler’s signed promise never to war in the other, Chamberlain cheerfully proclaimed “peace for our time.” It was his policy’s crowning success, his “mission accomplished” moment.

Unfortunately, in the wake of this “success” there would follow Hitler’s seizing the rest of Czechoslovakia, his invasion of Poland, and a catastrophic World War II, the results from which the world still struggles and suffers.

Similarities abound in President Bush’s leadership and in his “mission accomplished” moment when, attired in flight suit, he landed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. In the wake of this “success” has come the news of there being no WMD, no proven link to al-Qaida, hundreds more of our brave troops killed, thousands more of innocent Iraqi civilians killed, greater alienation toward us by the world community, and more recruits entering the ranks of terrorism. Still we know not the future disastrous consequences to follow from the President’s intervention policy.

As in Churchill’s time, an ill-conceived policy’s ill effects do not always become immediately evident. Chamberlain could not foresee all the havoc that would befall Britain and the world from his “success” at Munich; Bush aboard the Abraham Lincoln could not foresee all the havoc that would befall us and the world from his “success.”

The umbrella of the earlier leader and the flight suit of the other, set amidst smiles and cheers, have come to symbolize the folly of policy–moments of “triumphant folly” to borrow a phrase from the great Polish author Joseph Conrad. Just as the day would come when the prime minister would never boast that his return from Munich had brought “peace in our time,” so the day has come when the president does not boast that his landing on board the Abraham Lincoln coincided with “mission accomplished.”

In a democracy it is a people’s task to judge the wisdom of their leader’s policy. When the ill effects of ill-conceived policy are not immediately known, this task is difficult. Persistent and false reassurances by their leader that his policy is making them safer render judgment more difficult still.

Confronting these factors Churchill, fearing for his country and its democratic institutions, persisted in speaking out. He faced the full might of his government and suffered its ridicule and derision. Yet, undaunted, he prevailed, and through his struggle he became one of history’s greatest dissidents.

Today our government’s irresponsible course and unworthy conduct present us with a challenge echoing that which confronted the British people over a half century ago. Winston Churchill’s faith, wisdom, and steadfastness serve as inspiration as we, employing the gift of our democracy, strive to change the course of this land we love.

Parker B. Albee Jr. is a professor of history at the University of Southern Maine.