Augie, it was not Just Reagan (and he stopped shipment of arms for a period), but the rest of the "enlightened" world. As for Hitler and the Sudetenland, the equivalent here was Iraq invading Kuwait, and unlike Chamberlain we initially reacted correctly, and if we had gone all the way to take him out then, that would had been quite fine, now that he is boxed, you need to wait until he does another Kuwait, or else, you trigger all over the world "justifications" for solving regional problems by force under the pretext of "preemptive" strikes.
Israel is said to possess nuclear devices (according to the US Government, Israel never admitted to that publicly), will that possession or alleged possession justify, let say, Syria to carry on a preemptive strike against Israel? If we go after Saddam here, you lay the ground work for such a Syrian preemptive strike in the future, with impunity, since you set a new lower threshold to the doctrine of preemptive defensive attacks. Period.
Zeev