US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld turned up the heat on critics of his government's policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism in a speech recalling the world leaders who sought to appease Nazi Germany.
"With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?" Mr Rumsfeld asked the American Legion US military veterans group in Salt Lake City last night.
"Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?"
The Bush administration is coming under increasing criticism from congressional Democrats and some Republicans over the direction of the Iraq war over three years after a US-led invasion toppled President Saddam Hussein.
Opinion polls show eroding US public support for the war.
Mr Rumsfeld said it was important to note that "any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere" in any long war.
In a speech heavy on condemnation of news coverage of the war, Mr Rumsfeld told the American Legion that insurgents and terrorists are waging a campaign to demoralize the American public.
Mr Rumsfeld, in his second speech in as many days to military veterans, tried to draw links between the current hostilities and World War Two. Taking on the Bush administration's current critics, he referred to the period before the earlier war, and said that "some seem not to have learned history's lessons."
"It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis - the rise of fascism and Nazism - they were ridiculed or ignored," Mr Rumsfeld said. "Indeed, in the decades before World War Two, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear."
"It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last," Mr Rumsfeld added. "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism."
Mr Rumsfeld's comments come as members of the Bush administration, ahead of November elections to determine control of the US Congress, connect the Iraq war to the broader fight against terrorism.
Mr Rumsfeld also condemned two news organizations, CNN and Newsweek magazine, for comments by some of their senior officials about the US military.