Wednesday, April 09, 2003
JOHN LEO TAKES ON THE " BUSH IS HITLER " NUTJOBS
" The Hitlerization of Bush is particularly outlandish since there already is a rather obvious Hitler figure in this drama. Saddam Hussein gouges out the eyes and cuts out the tongues of resisters--and their children. He drills holes in people's hands and pours acid into the holes. He rapes and tortures. Yet the "peace" and the human-rights movements are reluctant to notice. Sarah Baxter of Amnesty International points out that her group issued a "harrowing" indictment of Saddam's regime just before 9/11; then it instantly switched gears, deploring western leaders who mentioned all the Saddam Hussein terror that Amnesty had laboriously documented.
Like Amnesty International's downplaying of Saddam's terror, the peace movement was a direct and abrupt result of 9/11. A month ago, a Washington Post news report said this February's peace rallies were agreed upon at an international meeting two months earlier in Italy, "but their roots go back to the days just after Sept. 11, 2001, when activists say they began meeting to map out opposition to what they anticipated would be the U.S. military response to the terrorist at-tacks on New York and the Pen-tagon." In other words, the "peace" organizers were not responding to any Hitler-like actions by President Bush. They just didn't want the United States to defend itself.
Many "peace" marchers, of course, are not anti-American, just antiwar. That's the point of all the news articles saying the movement has "broadened," i.e., pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. However, we should all pay some heed to whom we hang out with. Tom Bevan, a blogger at RealClearPolitics, put it nicely: "It matters a great deal who is organizing the protests. I don't absolve the `true' antiwar protesters for taking part in a march organized by American-hating groups any more than I'd absolve someone who marched in a legitimate protest of immigration laws if it was sponsored by the KKK."
Being Left-wing doesn't mean never having to say you are sorry - it means never living up to the standards you want to impose on everyone else. ¶ 12:09 PM
" The Hitlerization of Bush is particularly outlandish since there already is a rather obvious Hitler figure in this drama. Saddam Hussein gouges out the eyes and cuts out the tongues of resisters--and their children. He drills holes in people's hands and pours acid into the holes. He rapes and tortures. Yet the "peace" and the human-rights movements are reluctant to notice. Sarah Baxter of Amnesty International points out that her group issued a "harrowing" indictment of Saddam's regime just before 9/11; then it instantly switched gears, deploring western leaders who mentioned all the Saddam Hussein terror that Amnesty had laboriously documented.
Like Amnesty International's downplaying of Saddam's terror, the peace movement was a direct and abrupt result of 9/11. A month ago, a Washington Post news report said this February's peace rallies were agreed upon at an international meeting two months earlier in Italy, "but their roots go back to the days just after Sept. 11, 2001, when activists say they began meeting to map out opposition to what they anticipated would be the U.S. military response to the terrorist at-tacks on New York and the Pen-tagon." In other words, the "peace" organizers were not responding to any Hitler-like actions by President Bush. They just didn't want the United States to defend itself.
Many "peace" marchers, of course, are not anti-American, just antiwar. That's the point of all the news articles saying the movement has "broadened," i.e., pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. However, we should all pay some heed to whom we hang out with. Tom Bevan, a blogger at RealClearPolitics, put it nicely: "It matters a great deal who is organizing the protests. I don't absolve the `true' antiwar protesters for taking part in a march organized by American-hating groups any more than I'd absolve someone who marched in a legitimate protest of immigration laws if it was sponsored by the KKK."
Being Left-wing doesn't mean never having to say you are sorry - it means never living up to the standards you want to impose on everyone else. ¶ 12:09 PM
