"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.

In the Footsteps of Whom?

After watching a number of "Star Wars" commemorations, it dawned on me. We, as a human society, have gone from this:


to this:

and now to this:

and this:

In the eyes of the world, at the very least since America's Iraq Attack (and, arguably, longer) we are now treading in the footsteps of storm troopers of yore.

Though the vast majority of the media, even some 'liberal' media, continue to blither and blather about 'our brave troops, protecting our way of life', the simple fact is that Bush, unwittingly (how else!) actually spoke the truth on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 when he stated that "combat operations in Iraq had ended." The simple truth is, the 'War in Iraq' had ended. From that point onward, it was no longer a 'war'; it was an occupation, pure and simple.

Why won't we call it an 'occupation'? There are a multitude of reasons. For one, in an occupation the occupier has many obligations under international law, none of which have we adhered to. Another is it is very much a different thing to tell the grieving relatives "Your beloved died fighting for this country." than "Your beloved died in an illegal occupation of a sovereign foreign country."

Please remember, the German people were also told that their relatives in the Wehrmacht were fighting to protect them, all the while the Wehrmacht were occupying foreign lands, killing foreign civilians, and destroying foreign infrastructure. Are we, in any material way, different from Wehrmacht troops in the Soviet Union, France, or Poland? We should think about it seriously.