"Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is" (h/t CTA)


(P)resident Bush, while on an official visit to Israel and addressing the Knesset, violated a couple of longstanding taboos. First, the injunction that 'politics ends at the water's edge', i.e., that domestic politics (dirty laundry) should cease once one leaves the confines of the United States. Obviously, making blatantly political statements in the legislature of a foreign land, even that of an ally, violates this injunction.



Second, the (P)resident also egregiously violated a corollary to 'Godwin's Law'. For those that have forgotten, Godwin's Law basically states:



"Godwin's Law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions." (Wikipedia)



For the record, here is the statement in question:



"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."



A couple of points worth note. The “American senator” to whom Bush refers just happened to be Sen. William E. Borah, Republican senator from Idaho. Odd, isn't it, that Bush refuses to name the senator, eh? Further, it is most odd that G.W. Bush should even dare to mention any favorable connection to the Nazis, especially inasmuch as G.W. Bush's own grandfather, Prescott Bush, was deeply involved in the extreme right wing plot to topple FDR and install a fascist government in his stead in 1933. Moreover, Prescott Bush was one of Nazi Germany's primary financiers and was even convicted of 'trading with the enemy' for his financing of Nazi Germany. And yet, and yet, G.W. Bush has the temerity to even dare to try to tar Barack Obama with the Nazi brush? How outrageous is that?



“Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Here we have the sootiest of kettles calling a relatively clean pot black and his spokesperson, Dana Peritonitis trying to say that, of course, the Nazi 'appeaser' barb was not intended to tar either Obama or the Democrats. Oh really? Then, who was it intended to defame? The Republican Party (a senator of the party who made the statement referred to by Bush)? The Bush family (remember, Prescott Bush was a nasty piece of work who attempted to overthrow his own government and replace it with a fascist regime and, further, was a prime funder of Hitler's Germany)?



In any vaguely sane and honest society, with a truly independent and free media, the airwaves and print media would be blaring forth the above facts and drawing the requisite conclusions. Other than very few commentators and the internets, what one mainly hears are the Sounds of Silence.

Need we learn from the Iraqis?

I know. The title of this piece is a bit odd, isn't it? However, mayhap, the Iraqis are pointing to something that we have forgotten or simply grown inured to.

In interview after interview, discussion after discussion, perhaps the premier complaint of the Iraqi civilians are the practices of the American military in Iraq. And what, pray tell, are these practices that raise the ire of the Iraqis? Well, excepting (but only to a slight degree) the fact that American troops have a nasty habit of casually shooting Iraqi civilians without cause, those practices are, by and large, standard operating procedure for most American police departments. The practice of (barely) announcing their presence and then battering or blowing the door off the hinges is standard operating procedure. Then, once the door is demolished, troops rush into the home, screaming at the shocked inhabitants of the dwelling, frequently cursing, forcing everyone to the floor, usually forcible and mandatory shackling of everyone in the household.

What is so disquieting is the fact that virtually all of the above have become so much S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) here, in the 'homeland', that they hardly raise an eyebrow anymore. Is it that we have become desensitized through watching endless hours of 'COPS'? Is it because we have repeatedly been instructed that the police are only 'ensuring our safety' hence we must unquestioningly follow orders automatically?

It doesn't seem to matter that, each year, more civilians by far die at the hands of the police than police at the hands of 'criminals'. Though much is made of each and every law enforcement death (the yearly memorials to those police who have fallen; the funerals of slain police that rival in pomp the funerals of Chicago mobsters in the 20s), very, very little is made, especially in the mainstream media, of the many, many deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of law enforcement. Only because they are so well known, we have the incidents in NYC of Amadou Diallo (41 shots) and Shawn Bell (50 shots). That is NYC. Then there was the incident in 2006 where police shot and killed 92 year old Kathryn Johnson during a late night 'no knock' raid. Johnson wounded 3 police officers, Johnson herself was shot and killed. From a 2006 Christian Science Monitor story about the Johnson raid,

“The number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 last year, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.

Botched raids are relatively rare, but since the early 1980s, 40 bystanders have been killed, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.” ~ After Atlanta raid tragedy, new scrutiny of police tactics

These are the very practices that, applied in Iraq, have caused that populace to rise in resistance and riot. Granted, Iraq is being oppressed under the heel of an onerous, vicious and violent occupation. However, is it really that much different from what is happening increasingly here, in the 'homeland' or, more appropriately, the 'heimatland'? Here is a link to a very recent (May 7, 2008) occurrence in Philadelphia where 3 men were dragged from their car; beaten, kicked and abused. This is the same Philadelphia (different mayor, different police commissioner, same attitude) which framed and is dead set on executing Mumia Abu-Jamal. Rodney King is alive and well and living in Philadelphia, it seems!

Do the Iraqis have the right idea? Perhaps we should ask ourselves that pivotal question.