Consider Adolph Hitler

I never thought I’d write those words but what he said during his rise to power is informative and perhaps a bit prescient in our current circumstances.

When Hitler said, “The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category”, he may have been writing a page in this administration’s playbook.

Happily for us, we don’t have a “leader of genius” (Faaaaaaaar from it) but keep Hitler’s words in mind when you read a few selected quotes from Bush’s speech to the American Legion yesterday in Salt Lake City.

It makes you wonder who the fascists really are:

“When terrorists murder at the World Trade Center, or car bombers strike in Baghdad, or hijackers plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic, or terrorist militias shoot rockets at Israeli towns, they are all pursuing the same objective — to turn back the advance of freedom, and impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world.”

[snip]

“Despite their differences, these groups from — form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology. And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.”

[snip]

“On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation — the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism — the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They’re successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century.”

So there you have it… Whether you fly planes into buildings; resist Israeli occupation; resist AMERICAN occupation, or just want to be left alone you’re a terrorist.

There is such a thing as terrorism and it should be condemned. But the men who flew planes into the WTC are not the same as the Iraqis who have picked up guns to resist opposition and/or occupation. Neither is the Palestinian who shoots an Israeli soldier in Gaza the same as the monster who blows up children in a Tel Aviv restaurant.

But it’s politically expedient for a failed president to use the fascist tactics of “common enemies” and “perpetual fear” to blithely defend the indefensible.

His latest round of cheerleading for a war already soundly rejected by the American people will only be effective if we allow him to scare us into submission. Or, as Hitler said, “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”
__________

The above quotes from Mr. Bush’s speech in Salt Lake City are a small sampling of the persistent propagandizing and fear mongering that appeared throughout the text. Space and, quite frankly, limited attention span forced me to limit the number of quotes I included in this post. To read the entire speech, go here

 

Why the losses?

I think Andrew J. Bacevich (professor of history and international relations at Boston University) hits the nail on the head in The Islamic Way of War.

Bacevich writes: Muslims have stopped fighting on Western terms—and have started winning:

What are we to make of this? How is it that the seemingly weak and primitive are able to frustrate modern armies only recently viewed as all but invincible? What do the parallel tribulations—and embarrassments—of the United States and Israel have to tell us about war and politics in the 21st century? In short, what’s going on here?

The answer to that question is dismayingly simple: the sun has set on the age of unquestioned Western military dominance. Bluntly, the East has solved the riddle of the Western Way of War. In Baghdad and in Anbar Province as at various points on Israel’s troubled perimeter, the message is clear: methods that once could be counted on to deliver swift decision no longer work.

Defeatist? Well, maybe Hannity would say so but it’s a point-of-view rarely discussed in the media. Is it possible that we’ll be fighting endless wars of attrition against an enemy who cannot (and will not) be beat?

It’s likely if we don’t get at those “root causes” that we’re never allowed to mention.

 

A terrible coincidence

On the very day (August 25th) that I blogged that Cpl. Stephen Bixler was Connecticut’s most recent fatal casualty in Iraq († May 2006), Marine Cpl. Jordan C. Pierson of Milford was KIA in Anbar Province.

Cpl. Pierson (pictured at left, below)…

…was 21 year old.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

 

The Party’s Over

Ok, it’s official, all that remains is tax policy. (Can Republicans even call this guy a “conservative” without smirking?)

Mr. Bush has abandoned “traditional conservative” stances on immigration, civil liberties, federal spending, limited government, non-intervention, tariffs and trade, and now, at long last, he’s even pitching the pro-lifers overboard

President Bush Approves Over the Counter Early Abortion Pill, Pro-Life Base Decries Move

By John-Henry Westen

WASHINGTON, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – For his pro-life supporter base, President George W. Bush stepped into one of the biggest political landmines of his Presidential career today with his approval of over the counter status for the abortion-causing morning after pill Plan B.

Rest easy, Fox Fans, it’s entirely possible that White House advisers simply forgot to tell the president what he “believes” this morning. No doubt a timely memo from the RNC will clear it all up…

 

The Essential Questions

James Wilson, my favorite Libertarian blogger, has an excellent article posted at the Partial Observer this week.

In True Believers, he asks the supporters of “endless war” twenty-five questions that would almost certainly expose the moral and philosophical bankruptcy of the War Party – if any of them were courageous enough to answer the questions honestly.

Here’s a sampling:

• 1. You suggest that many critics of Israel, and of U.S. aid to Israel are anti-Semites. But which is more prevalent, anti-Semitism in the anti-war crowd, or anti-French and anti-Arab bigotry in the pro-war crowd?
• 3. How is bombing non-combatants from above via the Air Force not its own form of “terrorism?” Why do uniforms and greater fire power make one side morally superior?
• 4. Why are non-combatant victims of American or Israeli bombs at least partly to blame for the policies of their government, but American and Israeli civilians are always innocent?
• 5. You claim that extremist Muslims hate us for our freedoms, and want to impose Muslim law on us. Do you not hate Muslim cultures just as much? Aren’t you just as determined to overthrow their societies to impose your own values on them? Even if not, wouldn’t Muslims have a right to perceive this to be true? How do you know that terrorism is a form of aggression, instead of resistance?
• 7. If we are morally justified in “preemptive war” to destroy countries that may threaten our interests several years from now, wouldn’t those countries be militarily justified in launching preemptive attacks on us?
• 10. If the United States suffered under persistent bombing and occupation by foreign troops, would you rule out terrorism against the occupiers? Against the aggressor nation’s homeland?
• 20. If your family was massacred by foreign soldiers, or killed by bombs from above, would your reaction be, “Ah, collateral damage. What can you do? No hard feelings.”

Go here to read the rest.

 

der Konservatives

When I first started blogging I was obsessed with the decidedly non-conservative nature of the modern, self-described “conservative Republican”. (Or, as a friend of mine humorously noted, “Neocons are neither.”)

The GOP has always suffered from a political “multiple personality disorder”. There were the big government, national security state brown shirts and the small government, civil libertarians who just wanted government out of their lives and, even, out of business. I was in the latter group at a time when there was still room for us in the Republican Party. Those days are long gone.

Llewellyn (Lew) Rockwell, a Libertarian thinker of the highest order, has summed up the new Republican philosophy very well in a recent article in the American Conservative:

If there are conservatives who believe in true liberty today, they were called liberals in earlier times. And any socialists today who call themselves liberals have simply stolen the term and converted it to mean its opposite.

The reality is that today there are ever fewer conservatives alive who believe in true liberty as the old school believed in it. They have been ideologically compromised beyond repair. They have been so seduced by the Bush administration that they have become champions of an egregious war, ghastly bureaucracies like the Department of Homeland Security, and utterly unprincipled on the question of government growth.

Granted, the corruption of conservatism dates way back—to the Reagan administration, to the Nixon administration, and even to the advent of the Cold War, when conservatives signed on to become cheerleaders of the national security state.

But it’s never been as bad as it is today. They sometimes invoke the names of genuinely radical thinkers such as F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. But their real heroes are talk-radio blabsters, television entertainers, and sexpot pundit quipsters. They have little intellectual curiosity at all.

In many ways, today’s conservatives are party men and women not unlike those we saw in totalitarian countries, people who spout the line and slay the enemy without a thought as to the principles involved. Yes, they hate the Left. But only because the Left is the “other.”

The money line there is: “They have little intellectual curiosity at all” Some of them may be literate enough to take their cues from National Review or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal but, let’s face it, most of them get their marching orders from Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and [fill-in-the-blank].

White House staffers tell the president what to think; talking points go out to the pundits; the pundits hold forth for the benefit of the great unwashed.

At the height of its power, the Soviet Union didn’t “do” propaganda half as well as these people “do” it. At least the Russians had to deal with a population that retained a modest portion of their critical thinking skills.

The lies proliferate and they’re swallowed whole:

• “The president is keeping us safe.”
• “The root cause of Islamic terrorism is a hatred of the Bill of Rights and open societies.”
• “Hezbollah — not al Quaida — is a the world’s most dangerous terror organization.” (Condi Rice actually said that!!)

And the biggest lie of all: “We can defeat Islamic extremism with bombs.”

 

Those damned "soft on terror " Democrats…

…could teach George Bush a lesson or two:

Bush staff wanted bomb-detection cash moved

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

[snip]

The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights was to involve liquid explosives.

Hawley said Homeland Security now is going to test the detector in six American airports. “It is very promising technology and we are extremely interested in it to help us operationally in the next several years,” he said.

[snip]

The administration’s most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T’s 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.

Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the top two lawmakers for Senate homeland appropriations, rejected the idea shortly after it arrived late last month, Senate leadership officials said. [Emphasis mine]

Ok, so how do the Republifascists spin this to make it seem like John Murtha’s fault?

 

To hell with al Quaida, bomb Syria!

The Bushies are rushing in to capitalize on the UK’s discovery of an alleged al Quaida plot to blow up British and American airliners, and I’m left scratching my head…

Is this a victory in the so-called War on Terror, or is it one more stark reminder that while al Quaida plotted and planned to attack us, Mr. Bush had us irretrievably bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire?

Five years after September 11th bin Laden remains at large. While the neocon press and pundits say, “no worries”, it can’t be doubted that his continued liberty is an enormous symbolic victory for the “terrorissss” and a rallying point for “those who would do us harm”.

As recently as last night , RNC Chair, Ken Mehlman, was describing Iraq as, “the central front in the war on terror.”

This is the type of logic that you have to adopt to be a “good Republican” these days:

• It’s no problem at all that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of September 11th and the motivating force behind today’s events remains at large.
• Iraq (a nation that never attacked us and had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11) is “the central front in the war on terror”.

You know, even if Iraq were the central front in the War on Terror (TM), it’s not as if the administration were doing a bang-up job there either!

It makes my head hurt… A lot…

 

Everyone’s favorite Saint

I really have to stop writing so much about religion. But, hey, it is Sunday.

I was trolling around this morning and was suprised to see the Prayer of St. Francis posted at Blogs For Bush.

I actually read B4B a lot. It’s neocon to be sure, but it’s not the racist/fascist garbage that you typically find at LGF. That said, it’s not exactly a peace blog either.

Everyone loves St. Francis but we were forced to say (and even sing) this prayer so often at Catholic grammar school that it’s almost become trite. Here’s the text for you pagans:

Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Ok, my point…

This prayer isn’t a plea for a general state of peace. (As it seems the B4B folks are using it.) It’s a prayer of conversion. Peace at the individual or personal level. Or, rather, a prayer to be given the grace to become a peacemaker.

There’s no doubt about it, I’m heartened to see that the Bushies are big on St. Francis but could you ever imagine Dick Cheney — or Jerry Falwell, for that matter — actually reciting these words?

It always seems that the Christians who “wear it on their sleeves” (although it does get votes!) are the ones who miss the point entirely.

Ok, Reverends, et al, resume the bombing for Jesus’ glory!

 

Iran: The Next War

James Bamford’s MUST READ at Rolling Stone. Here’s the intro:

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.

Long, detailed, excellent work. Typical of Bamford.