BUSH VS HITLER?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

This morning’s news had an article about a teacher in Aurora, Colorado (family in Michigan) that compared President Bush to Adolph Hitler in his geography class. He actually said that Bush’s State of the Union speech was eerily similar to Hitler’s speeches; “Sounds a lot like what Hitler used to say…conquer the world and make people live the way we want them to live…”

A student in his class recorded the lecture; his conservative father sent it to a conservative radio program. The internet somehow got a hold of it too and then all hell broke loose along with threatening phone calls and emails to the teacher, student and related families. This is kind of similar to the Muslim reaction to political cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammad.

I am not going to argue if the teacher’s remarks were appropriate for a geography class; it probably was not subject related. The teacher said he wanted to stimulate his students to think – again, in geography class? I can see why some parents would be upset but I was not in his class so I cannot really judge how appropriate his remarks were.

In general, most Americans do not know what Hitler ever said - period. They see old films with Hitler banging on a table and screaming. The impression is of a madman telling Germans to kill all non-Germans. But the German race is not stupid, in fact they are very smart so for Hitler to convince them to go to war he had to use some really good persuasive techniques.

He obviously convinced them that Germany was surrounded by enemies bent on destroying them and the only way for Germany to survive was to conquer those other nations and install German law and order and since Germans are the “Master Race” they are ordained by God to be rulers over lesser human beings.

WWII began when Hitler told his people that the Poles attacked Germany. Hitler had amassed a huge army and air force; the Poles still had horse cavalry and he tried to sell the fact that Poland attacked Germany. Well it worked.

President Bush convinced a nation that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were a danger to the United States. They had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) which they were going to use on us. He also convinced us that Iraq and Hussein was somehow tied to Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. We now know all this was false and a war of invasion was based of false pretenses.

Bush and Chaney’s neoconservative plan to change the world order (documented in the Wall Street Journal) included the democratization of Muslim nations so they could behave like us. I can see how the teacher could compare Bush to Hitler based on historic data – it is not a stretch.

American conservatives, just like the Muslims and their cartoons, reacted with blind emotion – how can you compare Bush to that evil monster Hitler who killed millions of people. Yes it is irreverent but very interesting.

Janusz