Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois Democrat, was not alone in recently comparing American behavior at Guantanamo Bay to that of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."
Tarring Bush and Co. with Hitlerian imagery has become a debased parlor game. Politicians and other public figures toss about these charged references, expecting to create a buzz and assuming their audience is as uninformed as they are.
Rep. Charles Rangel, New York Democrat, cited the Holocaust to blast American policy in Iraq: "This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed." In his upside-down world, the mass murderer is the moral equivalent of those who stop him. Before Mr. Rangel, Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, evoked Nazi Germany to warn about the Bush administration.
An official of the Red Cross lectured that American guards at Guantanamo were "no better than and no different than the Nazi concentration camp guards." Left unsaid was the logical sick corollary: If the perpetrators of the Holocaust were really no worse than American guards at Guantanamo, then, as is the case at Guantanamo where not one death has been reported, did no one really perish at Belsen or Treblinka, either?
And these people aren't the only ones to stoop to play this game. There's also been NAACP Chairman Julian Bond ("The American flag and the Confederate swastika"), former Ohio Sen. John Glenn ("It's the old Hitler business"), Garrison Keillor ("Brownshirts in pinstripes"), Linda Ronstadt ("A new bunch of Hitlers") and Al Gore ("Digital Brownshirts").
Why suddenly does Adolf Hitler pop up everywhere when the Nazis have absolutely no relation with a democratic United States or a humane military?
Time Magazine recently reported that when Mohammed al-Qahtani, suspected 20th hijacker of September 11, 2001, was in distress, he was given a CAT scan and put on a heart monitor. A radiologist was flown to Cuba for consultation.
In contrast, is Mr. Durbin aware the Nazis laid railroad tracks to the very gates of Auschwitz to facilitate its engine of mass death, an industry that would take more than 6 million people? Or can he grasp the idea of 25 million perishing in the gulag -- the population of Durbin's Illinois being exterminated twice?
Note the escalating frustration behind these outbursts. Although an occasional conservative like Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, has stooped to Hitlerian slander, most offenders, such as Michael Moore (comparing the Patriot Act to "Mein Kampf") or George Soros (saying Mr. Bush reminded him of "the Germans"), are on the left, furious over their inability to affect events.
Since September 11, we have had midterm and national elections, both referenda on the so-called war against terror. Those on the left have lost the majority of state legislatures, governorships, the House, the Senate, the presidency and perhaps the Supreme Court. If normal debate somehow didn't rile up the somnolent American people, why not try conjuring up the ghosts of Hitler or Josef Stalin?
There is also an asymmetry in these slurs. Few mention there really are monsters and mass killers living among us -- the North Koreans who have starved 1 million of their own, Saddam's reign of terror that may have killed as many, and, of course, the Islamicist murderers who behead, blow up and torture. "Mein Kampf" still sells well in some Arab capitals, not in Washington or New York.
So cowards such as officials of the Red Cross and Amnesty International, and, yes, American politicians, prefer to showboat the purported misdemeanors of people who are civilized and will listen to them, rather than to condemn the horrendous felonies of those who are barbaric and will pay them no heed.
As a result, the bar is lowering. In today's climate, Alfred Knopf has already published a novel about killing the president. Charlie Brooker writing in the Guardian in London prayed for another Lee Harvey Oswald to take out George W. Bush. Comedians, New York plays and art exhibits also bandy about assassination.
Each time a public official evokes Hitler to demonize the president, the American effort in Iraq or its conservative supporters, cheap rhetorical fantasy becomes only that much closer to a nightmarish reality where the unstable, here and abroad, act on the belief America really is Hitler's Germany.
We will all soon reap what the ignorant are now sowing.
Zimbabwe's brutal clearances of thousands of slum dwellers from the country's capital, Harare, might not top the league of human-rights abuses in Africa (as defendants of Robert Mugabe's corrupt regime are quick to point out). But the almost casual cruelty of the 'Drive Out the Rubbish' campaign, whose victims now include two children crushed to death by bulldozers, marks an alarming increase in that nonchalant violence we associate with tyrants.
And they add, too, to a growing list of abuses that include one of the highest torture rates in the world, deliberate killings, physical assaults and torture of political opponents which together put in serious question Zimbabwe's claim to be a democracy.
Motivated by bitterness about the colonial past and extreme self-interest, Mugabe has undermined a once independent judiciary; destroyed the country's agricultural infrastructure, the best in Africa; closed down its free press; expelled the critical foreign press; persecuted the minority Ndebele-speaking people from Matabeleland; and driven the general population into poverty and starvation.
Two full paragraphs and not one word about what they'd do about it, but maybe they're just getting warmed up.
Despite these atrocities, Robert Mugabe enjoys an unwarranted tolerance from fellow African leaders who appear to believe that the only fault line in this rapidly deteriorating economy is white farmer resistance to land redistribution. The leading apologist remains Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, whose refusal to condemn his old friend is now seriously failing the people of Zimbabwe. Just as South Africa's friends around the world once found ways to put pressure on the apartheid regime of South Africa, now Zimbabwe's nearest neighbour must recognise its responsibilities.
But critics of Mugabe in the UK must recognise their responsibilities, too.
As they get ready to blame themselves. No wait ...
International obligations require the government to ensure that returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin does not put their lives in danger. This is impossible in a country as closed to outsiders as Zimbabwe. We cannot call on African leaders to condemn Mugabe's brutality and yet return asylum seekers into the hands of his thugs. Jack Straw cannot as Foreign Secretary lecture fellow G8 ministers about the deteriorating situation in the country, while his cabinet colleague, Charles Clarke, authorises the return of people who have fled from there.
This Home Office obduracy makes an uncomfortable counterpart to Robert Mugabe's 'Drive Out the Rubbish' campaign, which forces shantytown dwellers back to inhospitable and often dangerous areas. By ignoring the parallels, we lose all credibility in our justified condemnation of Mugabe's increasing tyranny.
It was lost a while back, doncha think? How 'bout sending 1Para into Zim-bob-we? We'll match with a brigade of the 82nd Airborne.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/26/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
once again the left looks at the mess they made for others and says, oh, isn't that a shame.
Too bad about the Pol Pot dead. Too bad about the 60 million dead for the fun and self-rightous party we had promoting communism (or is it 600? What's a zero among friends?) Too bad all we love about Europe is under serious threat of decline. Too bad about all those millions starving in Korea - but Kim Jong's the man. Too bad Cuba's such a little dung-hole, cause Castro and Che are cool.
Yeah, too bad you guys never got what a bunch of tools you have been for ruthless despots.
#3
By ignoring the parallels, we lose all credibility in our justified condemnation of Mugabe's increasing tyranny.
I don't think the "parallels" actually exist. There are plenty of social safety nets for British squatters. There aren't ANY for Zimbabwe's "nonpersons". Once again the LLL Media mouthpieces try to shield the left-wing perpetrators of stupidity from the consequences of their behavior. I just wrote a screed to OUR lll moonbats on my own weblog (click link) who are equally to blame for the perpetration of the destruction of human society. There will come a time of clensing. I LOVE the "Lord High Executioner"'s song, "I've got a little list...". I'll be busy making up my own. You all should, too. One day, perhaps very soon, it will be necessary to either surrender ALL our freedoms, or exercise those lists.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/26/2005 19:40 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
