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Keeping Us in Fear
Posted 9-7-2006
It amazes me how some
Americans (though they are clearly in the minority) are still buying the
Bush Administration's propaganda about the invasion of Iraq and its
relationship to international terrorism. They buy the idea that somehow this
conflict is of the same proportion as fighting World War II or the Cold War.
Just because Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and their hand puppet George
Bush say those things, it doesn't make it so.
The other day I received an
e-mail encouraging me to wake up. Attached was a headline from 1939 when the
Germans invaded Poland. I wasn't sure if the author of the e-mail was
comparing terrorists to the powerful Wermacht of the Third Reich or
comparing the USA to Poland. But buying these distortions from Team Cheney
is absolutely foolish. There is nothing that these terrorists can do that
compares to an invading army like the Wermacht. They are criminals with some
weaponry at their disposal. They are fighting through random attacks against
the perceived (or real) injustices inflicted upon Muslims by the West and by
the governments of the Muslim world that have ties to the West.
The Nazis had the rebuilt
industrial power of Europe's largest country at their disposal. Anyone that
compares what Osama Bin Laden has at his disposal to what Hitler had at his
either lacks judgment and understanding, or simply is buying the propaganda.
Bin Laden has no consensus of support in the Muslim world or even the
citizens of any particular Islamic nation on his side. Hitler had the
overwhelming majority of Germans supporting him by the time he invaded
Poland. He also had Germanic people in Austria and Germanic people in other
sections of neighboring countries that had been taken from Germany after
World War I. It is like comparing a pit bull to Tyrannosaurus Rex. They both
can inflict damage but the proportionality of that damage sure is different.
Comparing international
communism to the terrorists, as Bush just did in a recent speech is equally
absurd. The Soviet Union, the largest country in the world, Communist China,
the most populous country in the world, and all their various satellites
were tremendously more capable of inflicting damage on a much larger scale
than a guy hiding in the hills of Pakistan.
Calling the terrorists
"fascists" is equally off base although in this instance it is almost like
"the pot calling the kettle black". The term "Fascism" as coined by the
Italians during the reign of Benito Mussolini was a merger of government and
corporate interests into one. "Islamo fascism" is a nonsensical term. The
fanatics in the Muslim world want a theocracy. They are not looking for a
merging of government and business interests, but just what administration
has done so since the day they took office? However, to call the Islamic
fundamentalists "theocrats" would make them appear to have a similar goal to
this administration's blindly loyal base; a government based on a certain
group's religious beliefs.
So why is the current
administration trying to use such ridiculous comparisons? It is simple;
things have not gone as they had planned. The only way to control the
American people, who seem to be tiring of the occupation of Iraq, is to link
Iraq and terrorism and to keep the people fearful. By comparing terrorists
to those historically powerful and evil enemies, that everyone has either
lived through or learned about, the Cheney team can demand unquestioned
obedience. And remarkably they still get it from some Americans. But the
misuse of labels demeans the sacrifices made against the real "Axis of
Evil". And it demeans the long geopolitical struggle that took place in the
decades after World War II that saw the eventual collapse of the Soviet
sphere of influence. I hope the majority of Americans have wised up to the
games being played by this administration. International terrorism has been
around for years and until the root causes are acknowledged and dealt with,
the USA will continue down a costly, wrong path.
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