THE ANGRY LEFT

If Bush is another Hitler, what words are left to describe Hitler?

BY BRET STEPHENS
Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

According to Sidney Blumenthal, a onetime adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President Bush today runs "what is in effect a gulag," stretching "from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world." Mr. Blumenthal says "there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union." In another column, Mr. Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Mr. Bush's "splendid little war," he writes, "has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat."

The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the U.S. holds some 10,000 "enemy combatants" prisoner; and second, that 122 U.S. soldiers were killed in action in April.

There are two explanations for all this. One is that Mr. Bush really is as bad as Sid, Al and Paul say: the dumbest, most feckless, most fanatical, most incompetent and most calamitous president the nation has ever known. A second is that Sid, Al and Paul are insane.

There's at least one more possibility: Sid, Al and Paul are calculated liars and propagandists who they know they can whip their lefty base into a fine froth by getting such nonsense printed in supposedly reliable mainstream organs.

Excellent article. I had experience with this type of thinking yesterday.In the two years since I transferred to a new school in NYC from the one I taught at for 16 years I had not engaged in much political conversation. Yesterday for the first time I attmpted political dialogue with two of my colleagues; one a young Green Party member who is a former Marine and the other an 60s demonstrator. I can't describe the conversation because there wasn't any. Just 20 minutes of name calling, sloganeering, and anger. Not a single piece of eveidence was presented to which I could respond.Only comments like conservatives are all crazy, selfish, evil a$$holes.

Had they been of a mind to listen I could have guided them on recent conservative thought. When a group is out of power for so long that it becomes irrelevant it must create a new construct with new ideas. From 1964 conservatives did that. They were able to formulate a new agenda and articulate it. Liberals have the opposite situation. Being in power so long they become intellectually lazy and emotionally entitled. When confronted with new ideas their response is that of Sidney Blumanthal, Paul Krugman, or my two colleagues, anger and name calling

First, the poster is not the author. I would hope you were intelligent enough to figure that much out.

Your assertion that 6000 Americans died in Vietnam is woefully incorrect. It's more like 58000.

The article states 6,000 in 1966, when total troop numbers were comparable. Failure to actually read the article makes it so much more difficult to comment intelligently.

It was interesting however, to read that you judge the success of a nation soley upon economic activity. The gap between rich and poor in the US has never been wider.

Prove it. I bet you can't. Econonmy, votes and profits - that's the Holy Trinity of Bush idealism. This is why he invades Iraq to depose a dictator, while maintaining support for other dictatorships like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - but of course Saudi Arabia can be forgiven for it's slaughtering of many in it's Christian minority as long as it supplies the oil.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are ruled by royalties. If you want to sound intelligent, you should attempt to explain how, in your opinion, these royal families rule "like dictators", otherwise you sound like you are spouting-off talking points with no real thought behind them. It seems that any nations, including Europeans, that wish to point out the obvious human rights abuses ongoing in Israel are malignant opponents of the divine infallablity of US conservatis

You have stated as fact something that is not in evidence. To sound intelligent, you should try to support your opinion on this matter before using it as a component of your other theories.

All in all, for a seminar poster I would give you a C- or D. I do applaud the effort, but unfortunately in real life, effort alone doesn't amount to much.

Please stop by in the future and try your hand at this again sometime.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.