Yes-Mr. President, Hitler Was Bad & Your Point Would Be? (Eugene Robinson)

[kpete]

Who Set the Wayback Machine for 1939?

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A19

With George W. Bush talking so much about Nazis and fascism, Donald Rumsfeld warning ominously against lily-livered appeasement and Dick Cheney quoting Franklin Roosevelt on the "dirty business" of war, one might worry that this direction-challenged administration has wandered into some sort of time warp. Somebody's going to have to break it to them that Churchill and Stalin are gone and the Dodgers don't play in Brooklyn anymore.


...............

Rumsfeld went furthest of all in claiming that it is, in fact, 1939 -- that the jihadist terror movement presents the same kind of threat to the world that Hitler did when he invaded Poland. He set up a straw man, warning that those who do not see the threat as clearly as he does are as blind as those who tried to appease Hitler. But he doesn't specify who he's talking about. Who wants to appease terrorists? Is it Democrats? Nervous Republicans who've seen the latest polls?

Nobody wants to appease terrorists. But some people have a different idea of how to fight them. The president is right when he says this conflict is unlike other wars, but he seems to miss the essential difference: It has to be fought in a way that doesn't create two new terrorists for each one who is killed.

That's not what the president wants to talk about, though. Between now and November, he wants to talk about a war that we can all agree on, even if it has no bearing on the war being fought today. Yes, Mr. President, Hitler was bad. And your point would be?

more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400698.html

[agingdem]

1. Karl Rove should be very familiar with the Hitler analogy

because his blueprint for GOP dominance mirrors the Third Reich playbook.