Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: GRUNHERZ on March 25, 2003, 07:24:45 AM
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SaburoS wrote:
"I'll give you a simple comparison (and no, I am not comparing Bush to Hitler):
Who is the most patriotic and loves his country most of the following examples?
1) The German citizen that goosestepped in unison and followed Hitler's orders blindly?
2) The German that defied his orders?
Maybe things aren't exactly as you see them."
I have seen this type of argument made over and over and over again by the people opposing american policy on Iraq. The main assumption being that pro war people arent thinking freely for themselves in their support of the war, while the anti war types are in their opposition.
My questions to the anti-war crowd:
Who is blindly goosetepping with bush? Why do you automatically assume that the folks who agree with the war are blindly goosetepping and have not made up their own minds that the war is the right thing to do?
On the other hand why do you automatically assume that the anti-war crowd has in fact thought about the issue and decided on their own that it is wrong as opposed to those who support the war?
And:
Were the people who supported the 911 war in afhanistan also blindly gossetepping with Bush? Please dont conveniantly forget that there was a robust and vocal antiwar movement against that attack as well....
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Please dont conveniantly forget that there was a robust and vocal antiwar movement against that attack as well....
I'm calling this one. There was broad international agreement and support for action in Afghanistan. Even the Pakistanis let the US et al use their country as a base. I don't remember any protests in my country.
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Not true at all.
There was the same gang saying the same things how we must let the UN handle it, how we cant do it because afghan civians will die, how the USA is hypocritical in acting becuse they helped Osama in 1980s, how Bush had ties to taliban, how it was a corporate war for caspian sea oil pipes, how the USA gave Taliban money, all in an attempt to stop us acting.
Since I doubt you will take my word for it how about this article from a noted antiwar group?
http://www.iacenter.org/nowardemos.htm
And this just to help refresh your memory:
http://pd.cpim.org/2001/oct07/2001_oct07_no%20war.htm
And just for the hell of it:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/468/468p15.htm
You dont seriously deny these facts do you?
Now that we have established the fact that there was also a vocal antiwar movement by many of the same groups, Not In our Name, ANSWER etc during the afghan war, please focus your energy in answering my questions in the first post.
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I don't remember any protests in my country.
There was not enough time to organize them. This war in Iraq happened in slow motion, so everyone opposed to it, including Hussein, had plenty of time to organize against it.
ra
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ra not true read the links I posted...
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Firstly, your questions assume I've made sweeping comments comparing pro-war people to goose-stepping Nazis. I haven't. Neither did I post the quote you use at the start of thread. So, taking both those points into consideration, there is nothing relevant to me in your post.
Secondly, anti-war groups are bound to protest against war... that's kind of like their raison d'etre. From that shaky common ground between the two conflicts you go on to make some very unsafe assumptions. So there were millions of people on the streets of London protesting against Afghanistan, were there? You had condemnation from France and Germany over the action?
The protests against this war were UNPRECEDENTED. You can't escape that fact, no matter how much you would like to.
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Then why even enter the thread with your first post... You have had no trouble disagreeing and arguing with me before, why be so timid now?
So again please feel free to answer my questions...
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Originally posted by Dowding
I'm calling this one. There was broad international agreement and support for action in Afghanistan. Even the Pakistanis let the US et al use their country as a base. I don't remember any protests in my country.
I remember lots of protests in your country against the war in Afghanistan.
Thousands of anti-war protesters have marched through London in a demonstration against the military air strikes on Afghanistan.
The CND-led march from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square reflected growing concern in some quarters over the US-led bombardment, organisers said.
War is not the answer, you can't fight fire with fire
Darren Johnson,
Green Party
Police said about 20,000 people had taken part in Saturday's demonstration, which followed the sixth night of US air strikes.
Campaigners also staged a march in Glasgow, while demonstrations against the strikes also took place across Western Europe. Earlier, anti-war protests were held in Australia
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1596810.stm)
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Because, while the rest of the post dealt your perception of someone else's posts, your last paragraph was a distortion of the facts.
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NUKE, I see mathematics is not your strong point.
20,000 does not equal 1.5 million, I'm afraid.
20,000 is shreck all. More than 20,000 marched to keep fox hunting legal. Hell, there were that many protesting for an end to the bombing against Serbia during the Kosovo crisis.
So, with those facts established, it is hard to spin the line that there was even an iota of parity between the protests over Afghanistan, compared to Iraq.
In terms of a physics experiment, call the normal marches, a few thousand strong, 'background'. The march held in London on February 15th was a peak of huge amplitude. It was repeated across the world. It's definitely enough to write a paper on and get published. See what I'm trying to say?
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Are you saying this was a distortion of the facts?
Were the people who supported the 911 war in afhanistan also blindly gossetepping with Bush? Please dont conveniantly forget that there was a robust and vocal antiwar movement against that attack as well....
Have you read the links I posted or are you conveinantly ignoring them out the obvious error of your first response - where you made no mention of magnitude or anything else just your belief that there was no widespread international opposition to the afghan war.
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More non-existant anti Afghanistan war protests:
http://www.iacenter.org/o27_rept1.htm
October 28, 2001--On Saturday, people in 75 cities throughout the U.S. demanded an end to the U.S. war against Afghanistan, as the mounting civilian destruction in Afghanistan causes support for the bombing campaign to crumble. They were joined by thousands more in 40 cities in 20 other countries.
http://www.uniservity.net/clubs_RenderPage.asp?clubid=3591&pageid=1753
Like all imperialist wars, it is waged with disregard for the innocent population being murdered in the attacks against the declared enemy. The bombing of Afghanistan is as immoral as the attack on the Twin Towers, and is no less reprehensible as an act of terrorism.
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Originally posted by Dowding
NUKE, I see mathematics is not your strong point.
20,000 does not equal 1.5 million, I'm afraid.
20,000 is shreck all. More than 20,000 marched to keep fox hunting legal. Hell, there were that many protesting for an end to the bombing against Serbia during the Kosovo crisis.
So, with those facts established, it is hard to spin the line that there was even an iota of parity between the protests over Afghanistan, compared to Iraq.
maybe logic is not one of your strong points. 20,000 ( only one example) is more than the zero you remember.
Maybe you are implying that unless there are 1.5 million people involved, it is not a protest.
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Logic? I didn't say they weren't any. I said I didn't remember any. And my whole point is that they were minor in size and frequency, and miniscule compared to the recent protests. They didn't stick in my memory for that very reason.
Were the people who supported the 911 war in afhanistan also blindly gossetepping with Bush? Please dont conveniantly forget that there was a robust and vocal antiwar movement against that attack as well....
Your comparison is not borne out by the facts. The anti-war movement was nowhere near as big or encompassing as the latest protests. You imply the opposite. You use the presence of an anti-war movement in both cases as proof of parity to suit your own particular argument. That is distortion, my friend.
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Originally posted by Dowding
Logic? I didn't say they weren't any. I said I didn't remember any. And my whole point is that they were minor in size and frequency, and miniscule compared to the recent protests. They didn't stick in my memory for that very reason.
Dowding, you are amazing. You posted that you didn't remember any protests, to which I mearly replied that I remembered a lot.
You then sqeal like a stuck pig for some reason, and respond with an insult to me and some side-stepping about numbers.
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And when I get home from work, I am going to point out to you just how many people from around the world, including your country, oppossed the action in Afghanistan
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You do that. Be sure to include a comparison with the numbers that oppose it now - that's the crux of my argument.
BTW, the jibe about mathematics was out of order. The point I'm trying to make does relate to the scale and size of the protest, and that is what I'm trying to convey.
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My feeling is the numbers are irrelevant in this argument. Why? Well if you think they are please tell me at what number of antiwar protestors does the pro war crowd become a mindess goosetepping bunch? Anyway in your first post you made no mention about the size of protests being important, just said we had worrldide loving support and that you didnt remember any protest in the UK. Then I provided overwhelming evidence that indeed there was a widespread organized anti afghan war protest movemement by the same people now leading the iraq war protests and using the same tactics and slogans again. And then you changed the subject emhesizing the size of the protests was what was different and not your incorrect assertion that there was no oppositiopn you "remember".
However thats not too imporant and maybe dweels on the past - lets move forward and allow me to propse something to you dowding.
Lets say for the sake of the argument, and to allow you to participae on your terms regarding the importance of protest size, that the numbers do matter, and the large size of the protests is relevant.
Does then the size of the antiwar protests automatically make the pro iraq war side's stance mindless goossetepping with bush?
Now dowding this question is directly meant for you and I would really like an answer.
Ok?
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My feeling is the numbers are irrelevant in this argument. Why? Well if you think they are please tell me at what number of antiwar protestors does the pro war crowd become a mindess goosetepping bunch?
Eh?!
Does then the size of the antiwar protests automatically make the pro iraq war side's stance mindless goossetepping with bush?
Jesus, what in hell's bells are you rambling on about?
Where did I say that ANY pro-war people are goose-stepping with Bush? And what does it have to do with the size of the anti-war protests?
Your obsession with goose-stepping pro-war people is unfathomable. Moreover, your obsession with pinning some non-existant accusation on me, says more about you, than me.
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You are changing the subject again...
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No I'm not. I simply fail to see the connection between goose-stepping pro-war people (?) and the number of anti-war protesters.
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There really isnt, you are the first one who mentioned anything about size of protests after you were caught in your false statement about the lack of them.
But since you said you dont support saburo' statement and that you dont have a dog in the fight why are you hanging on in here trying to change the subject and argue for no apparent reason?
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take a close look at the crowds in that 75 city bullcrap.
one is a auditorium with about 200 young republicans. both the sides are empty. :rolleyes:
the others never show more than a couple hundred at a time in a carefully arranged and croped manner.
in otherwords i call bull****.
show me one 10th of 1.5 million supporting this war. in one picture. thats 150,000 not 300 lol .
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
SaburoS wrote:
"I'll give you a simple comparison (and no, I am not comparing Bush to Hitler):
Who is the most patriotic and loves his country most of the following examples?
1) The German citizen that goosestepped in unison and followed Hitler's orders blindly?
2) The German that defied his orders?
Maybe things aren't exactly as you see them."
I have seen this type of argument made over and over and over again by the people opposing american policy on Iraq. The main assumption being that pro war people arent thinking freely for themselves in their support of the war, while the anti war types are in their opposition.
Good morning Grunherz,
Sidestepping my question and twisting it. I thought I was clear enough by my "not comparing Bush to Hitler" statement with that question. My question has more to deal with perceptions of patriotism.
I'll be more clear for you then perhaps you'll be brave enough to answer the question.
Without drawing comparisons to Hitler and Bush, and the ideology of Nazi Germany and the USA.
I'll give you a simple comparison (and no, I am not comparing Bush to Hitler):
Who is the most patriotic and loves his country most of the following examples?
1) The German citizen that goosestepped in unison and followed Hitler's orders blindly?
2) The German that defied his orders?
So your answer? #1 or #2? Please elaborate on your choice.
Thnx.
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in otherwords i call bull****.
show me one 10th of 1.5 million supporting this war. in one picture. thats 150,000 not 300 lol .
http://www.msnbc.com/news/886732.asp
March 18 — Sixty-five percent of Americans believe the United States should take military action against Iraq, but a majority also believes a war will increase the threat of terrorism inside the United States, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday. The level of support for war was the highest in seven NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys conducted over the past year.
is 65% of America more than 1.5 million? I need to take a picture of the text of the poll so you can view the information as a picture as requested.
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When Democracy Failed - The Warnings Of History
By Thom Hartmann
March 17. 2003
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted.
He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world.
His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus.
Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings.
Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will."
As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors.
This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas.
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He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity.
He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time."
Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself.
Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war.
America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
Copyright by Thom Hartmann, permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.