Pat Buchanan: U.S. Pays the High Price of Empire

Los Angeles Times ^ | 09/18/2001 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[Pokey78]

As the twin towers of the World Trade Center came down in flames, taking 5,000 Americans with them, an unserious era in U.S. history came to an end. "All is changed, changed utterly," wrote poet W.B. Yeats. President Bush has now received full authority to wage war against all who abetted the slaughter. It must be done. Our American family cannot permit the mass murder of our brothers and sisters to go unpunished. But as the president directs the moral outrage of his wounded nation, he will need the wisdom of Solomon.

[Victoria Delsoul]

How many others among our 11 million "undocumented" immigrants are ready to carry out truck bombings, assassinations, sabotage, skyjackings?

BS! They were legal, documented immigrants. Pat despises the poor illegal Mexicans, who have never committed a terrorist act against this country, as the LEGAL Arabs immigrants have done! All he does is talk and do squat every time there is trouble, but he is incapable of giving solutions that work. He received 1% of the vote in the last election, which is apropos since he is NOTHING more than 1% percent of a man!

[William Wallace]

Excellent post, Victoria.

Our enemy, we are told, is Osama bin Laden. But though he may be the instigator and financier of terror, the war crimes of Tuesday last were carried out by men who live among us. The enemy is already inside the gates. How many others among our 11 million "undocumented" immigrants are ready to carry out truck bombings, assassinations, sabotage, skyjackings?

I like the "we are told" part. As if plotting and financing last week's attacks on the WTC and Penatagon might not necessarily be the act of an enemy. The rest of the paragraph implies that illegal aliens, most of whom are Mexicans who come here seeking jobs, are responsible for terrorist attacks. Pure idiocy.

Buchanan cannot recognize that Islamic fundamentalism is behind these evil acts because Pat is a rabid anti-Semite and racist hatemonger. He cannot draw a moral distinction between Arab terrorists who deliberately target Israeli civilians and children versus Israeli soldiers who accidentally kill Arab civilians while pursuing terrorists. Actually, that's incorrect, Pat does draw a moral distinction there: he embraces the Palestinian terrorists who bomb school buses while demonizing Israelis for defending their country.

Poor Pat. With nearly all of his beloved Nazi war criminals dead and buried, he can only find heroes among the bin Ladens, the Arafats and the Husseins. If Pat wasn't a certifiable loon, he would probably be executed for treason.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Here Here!!!

Excellent post, William. I'm sick and tired of that socialist in "conservative" disguise Buchanan.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Journal Entry: September 18

From these ashes...
Luis Gonzalez
September 18, 2001 

Touch America

</a href>

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

[a_witness]

We are told the first target of America's wrath will be the Taliban. But if we rain fire and death on the Afghan nation, a proud, brave people we helped liberate from Soviet bondage, we too will slaughter hundreds of innocents. And as they count their dead, the Afghans too will unite in moral outrage; and, as they cannot fight cruise missiles or Stealth bombers, they will attack our diplomats, businessmen, tourists. Apparently, our first ally is Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Let us pray that his decision does not bring him down. A pro-Taliban takeover of his country would give fundamentalists the atom bomb. Commentators are demanding that Bush declare war on all who preach hatred against us or have harbored terrorists: Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. William Bennett wants China added to the enemies list. Some are clamoring for an invasion of Iraq. Yet U.S. air, naval and ground forces have been cut in half since Desert Storm. And in any declared war on all the rogue nations of the Islamic world, the first casualties would be our Arab allies: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The second would be Western unity as North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, facing the threat of an crushing oil embargo, begged off joining Bush's war coalition.

I read between the lines and surmise grimly that the only nation with whom Mr. Buchanan would support a war would be Israel ...

[Luis Gonzalez]

Pat is a bigger anti-freedom terrorist than the totality of all the illegal mexicans in the country. He can cause more damage with his idiocies than bombs.

Thanks for the *ping* Victoria.

[Greg Weston]

Buy yourself a clue William. Didn't you read that Pat wants the terrorists to pay big time? He hasn't "embraced terrorists" that's just total BS from you...Nazi crap? Good job at avoiding the real issue with cheap shot insults. This is about the future William...about avoiding past mistakes. Again buy yourself a clue.

[William Wallace]

Patrick J. Buchanan: In His Own Words

"Those of us in childhood during the war years were introduced to Hitler only as a caricature…Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him. But Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."
St. Louis Globe – Democrat, Aug 25, 1977

"Perhaps this endless search for Nazi war criminals, these endless re-enactments, on stage and screen, of Hitler’s concentration camps are good for the soul. To what end, however, all this wallowing in the atrocities of a dead regime when there is scarcely a peep of protest over the prison camps, the labor camps, the concentration camps operating now in China and Siberia, in Cuba and Vietnam."
Washington Times, August 24, 1983

"That the United States would sit still for anything was brought home to the Israelis, long ago, on the third day of the Six-Day War, when Lyndon Johnson ordered a coverup of an Israeli rocket-and-machine gun attack on the U.S. intelligence ship Liberty off the Sinai, an attack costing the lives of 37 brave American soldiers.

When it suits them, our Israeli allies launch air strikes on Tunis, Baghdad or Beirut; they invade Lebanon; they even enlist U.S. traitors, like the Pollards, to loot the secrets of a nation that has manifested toward them an extraordinary indulgence."
- January, 1990

"The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody."
- NY Post, March 17, 1990 (from a column about the trial of accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk)

"Whatever Rudolph did during World War II, his quarter century of service to the United States entitles the old man to a public hearing before he goes to his grave."
- NY Post, July 14, 1990, on Arthur Rudolph, Nazi rocket scientist investigated by OSI who aided the American space program

"I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism…"
- William F. Buckley
National Review, December 30, 1991

"There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States."
- The McLaughlin Group, Aug 26, 1990

In an August 25,1990, column, Buchanan criticized commentators urging military intervention in Iraq, naming Abe Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthamer and Henry Kissinger. On August 29th, he wrote the following:

"’The civilized world must win this fight,’ the editors thunder. But, if it comes to war, it will not be the ‘civilized world’ humping up that bloody road to Baghdad; it will be American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown."
- Washington Times, August 29, 1990

"David Duke is busy stealing from me. I have a mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft."
- Manchester, NH Union Leader, December 15, 1991

"I know the power of the Israeli lobby and the other lobbies, but we need a foreign policy that puts our own country first."
- Meet the Press Interview. September 12, 1999.

"After World War II, Jewish influence over foreign policy became almost an obsession with American leaders."
A Republic, Not an Empire. P. 336.

"Senator Joseph McCarthy, in his career fighting communists, did nothing to their collaborators, sympathizers, and defenders to compare with what was done to the patriots of America First. But the acolytes of FDR won the great debate as decisively as America won the war. To this day, any who oppose U.S. commitments to fight wars in Europe or Asia, or new global entanglements, must first answer to the intimidating charge that they are nothing but ‘isolationists.’"
A Republic, Not an Empire, P. 250

[William Wallace]

"I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism…"</font size>
-- William F. Buckley

[Pelham]

But you notice they do pretend to read his essays. It's hard to say if they really can't understand what he writes, or they simply misrepresent him in order to have a straw argument to defeat.

[Pelham]

Strangely the tragedy hasn't prevented the anti-Pats from taking their shots.

Of course not. Appy Pappy and his pals react to Pat like the Taliban reacts to the West. Mindless hatred.

[William Wallace]

Defender of Nazis

Buchanan is the most prominent defender of accused Nazis in America. The most famous case is that of John Demanjuk, who was accused of being an infamous death camp guard named Ivan the Terrible. Buchanan proclaimed his innocence for years, against ample criticism, and felt vindicated when an Israeli court declared there was not enough evidence to convict Demanjuk of being Ivan.

Buchanan continues to declare that Demanjuk has been proved "innocent". Actually, a key piece of evidence (from German documents) that exonerated him as Ivan showed Demanjuk to be a willing guard at Sobibor, another extermination camp where 250,000 died. Even the National Review, while generally defending Demanjuk and Buchanan's support for him, concedes that "Demanjuk was probably guilty of being a lesser accomplice in the Nazi machinery of genocide. That is a fair summary of the Israeli court's findings."

More to the point, Demanjuk is only one of several accused Nazis Buchanan has defended in one way or another. These include Karl Linnas (Buchanan personally appealed to Ed Meese, then Attorney General, to block his deportation to the Soviet Union); Klaus Barbie (Buchanan did not oppose his trial, but argued the US should not have apologized to France for sheltering Barbie after WWII); Arthur Rudolph, a rocket scientist involved in slave labor and severe punishments at a German rocket factory (Buchanan argued his confession was a "lie" while acknowledging he was a "nominal member of the Nazi party and of the SA until 1934"); and Frank Walus (of all the accused, the one most likely innocent.)

One of the most striking examples is Kurt Waldheim, the disgraced former UN leader. Buchanan repeatedly attacked him during his tenure, but once his Nazi past came out, Pat complained that "the ostracism of President Waldheim [has] an aspect of moral bullying and the singular stench of selective indignation." He also rationalized that "like others in Hitler's army, Lt. Waldheim looked the other way."

In each of these cases, Buchanan found a factual reason to defend the accused, an appeal to justice. But put together, it is striking how often he rushes to the defense of accused Nazis. He has also attacked the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation (which pursues war criminals) more generally:

"You've got a great atrocity that occurred 35, 45 years ago.... Why... put millions of dollars [into] investigating that?"

Holocaust Revisionism

Perhaps the single most extreme and scary thing Buchanan has done is to question whether the Holocaust was really that bad. In the course of defending Demanjuk, he argued that charges of complicity in mass murder using Treblinka's gas chambers were false -- because the gas chambers didn't really work.

In his March 17, 1990 column, he wrote that diesel engines, the exhaust from which was used in the Treblinka gas chambers, "do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. ... Demanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill."

His evidence was a 1988 accident where a train stalled in a tunnel, with the engine running for a few minutes. No one died. Of course, the train operator was not trying to kill anyone. Apparently, properly tuned diesels do not produce much carbon monoxide, but they can be (and were) tweaked to produce deadlier exhaust. Many people actually think that in the gas chambers, the exhaust was used to suffocate, not poison. In a crowded, sealed chamber this would happen much more quickly.

As Muravchik points out in the Commentary article, "diesel exhaust fumes were used not only at Treblinka but also at Chelmno, Sobibor, and Belzec, and were moreover employed extensively by the Nazi killing squads inside the USSR." Denying that diesel exhaust can kill means that much of the generally accepted history of the Holocaust must be false.

Buchanan has refused to discuss his statements on the record, but told reporter Jacob Weisberg of a "bolder debunking claim (concerning the gas chambers) than he is willing to endorse in print." When Weisberg asked him where he got the anecdote about the stalled train, he would say only "Somebody gave it to me." All evidence points to Buchanan getting this from Holocaust Revisionist groups. Treblinka is often singled out by these extremists, because the gas chamber was destroyed, and most witnesses murdered, before Allied troops arrived at the end of the war.

A well-researched article by Jamie McCarthy persuasively identifies Buchanan's source as the July 1988 issue of the German American Information and Education Association, a revisionist group.That issue goes on to say "the German people were 'holocausted' after WW II, especially by the Bolsheviks, originally a Jewish/Zionist movement."

In his Ivan the Terrible column, Buchanan also tried to explain away death camp eyewitnesses by saying "Since the war, 1,600 medical papers have been written on 'The Psychological and Medical Effects of the Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors.' This so-called 'Holocaust Survivor syndrome involves 'group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.' "

To this day - the last week of February 1996 to be exact - Buchanan still defends his Demanjuk columns as "the best journalism I ever did."

And he contests several other generally accepted aspects of German history. (He is himself entirely German, on his mother's side, and half Irish on his father's.) Buchanan argued that the British started the terror-bombing in WWII (causing Germans to retaliate). He wrote Reagan's infamous description of the German soldiers buried in Bitburg, Germany (including SS members) as "victims of the war". He wrote a column in 1990 publicizing "Other Losses", a book alleging that one million German POWs died in American camps at the end of WW2, due to General Eisenhower's supposedly fanatical hatred of Germans. He argued Britain started WWI and pulled us into a fight with Germany through "lying British propaganda."

And during the reunification of Germany in 1989, many neighboring countries pressured Germany to accept its postwar borders and give up claims to land it lost at the end of WW2. Buchanan applauded Helmut Kohl as a "patriot" for his "reluctance to sign away all rights to the lost German territories."

Defender of Nazis sources

"Buchanan on Trial", Joshua Muravchik (letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p2

"The Demanjuk fallout" (editorial response to above letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p18

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p35-36

The column defending Waldheim was reportedly in the Chicago Sun Times, March 1989.

Holocaust and Historical Revisionism sources

"Ivan The Terrible -- More Doubts?", Pat Buchanan, New York Post, March 17, 1990

"Denying the Holocaust", Deborah Lipstadt, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p 5-6, p 26, p 238 notes 13 & 14

"The Heresies of Pat Buchanan", Jacob Weisberg, The New Republic, October 22, 1990 p26-27

Jamie McCarthy, USENET, April 8, 1995

"Buchanan on Trial", Joshua Muravchik (letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p2

"The Demanjuk fallout" (editorial response to above letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p18

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p35-36

"The Beltway Populist", Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, March 4, 1996 p26

[William Wallace]

"[Hitler was] an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier... [and] a political organizer of the first rank."</font size>
-- Pat Buchanan

[Victoria Delsoul]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

[Luis Gonzalez]

African women have seen Pat naked?

Outrageous!

[Greg Weston]

You keep trusting those commies William. There has never been one single shread of credible evidence that Demjanjuk ever harmed a single person anywhere. Ivan Marchenko was the REAL Ivan. Deal with it. Those who persecuted and tried to frame Demjanjuk were no better than Nazis themselves. Good reading below William, check it out.

An Evil Campaign to Frame an Innocent Man The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, by Yoram Sheftel. London: Victor Gollancz, 1994. 379 pages. Reviewed by Lesya Jones On July 29, 1993, John Demjanjuk was acquitted by the Israeli Supreme Court of the charge of being the sadistic Treblinka guard "Ivan the Terrible." This book, written by his Israeli attorney, deals with the pivotal Israeli chapter of his 16 year ordeal.

The title says it all, in a nutshell. It is a scathing and uncompromising account of the "trial of the century." Its author, a fervent Zionist and Israeli patriot, spares none of the many players in the Demjanjuk affair, not even the "Ukrainian goyim" who paid for his fees. It is a highly personal account in which the defense counsel, and not the accused, is the star attraction in a courtroom drama that riveted a worldwide audience.

An experienced criminal lawyer and expert in identification cases, with a penchant for adventure (he successfully defended the notorious gangster Meyer Lansky), Sheftel decided to join the defense team after being shown the highly suggestive and biased photo spread used to identify John Demjanjuk as "Ivan the Terrible." On a more personal level, he was motivated to take on the case because he was convinced that "the one and only purpose of this move was to conduct a special 'Israel-style' show trial, to teach Israeli children the story of the Holocaust and heighten Holocaust awareness among the public."

An International Conspiracy The fast-paced and ebullient style contrasts chillingly with the grim and sinister content. Sheftel amasses incontrovertible evidence which proves that the Demjanjuk affair was not simply a case of mistaken identity but, rather, a deliberate and cold-blooded conspiracy by superpowers United States and former Soviet Union, as well as Germany, Israel and Poland to withhold exculpatory evidence in their possession and send to the gallows an innocent no man's man. These countries did this in pursuit of their respective agendas.

In the United States, the Office of Special Investigation (OSI) at the Department of Justice, which was established to investigate alleged Nazi war criminals residing in the US, was particularly zealous in its efforts to destroy Demjanjuk. Having just lost a series of decisions, the OSI was, in fact, fighting for its life. Congressman Joshua Eilberg, Chairman of the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Immigration, wrote in August, 1978, to US Attorney General Griffin Bell re the Demjanjuk case: "We cannot afford to risk losing another decision." This anxiety was shared by Alan Ryan Jr., who headed the OSI from its establishment until 1981. In an interview with a local Alabama newspaper in 1991, Ryan reminisced: "If we had lost that case, we probably would have had a very short life span." In other words, "the OSI conspired to shorten Demjanjuk's life in order to lengthen its own."

Evidence Discarded and Manufactured In fact, the OSI knew as early as August 1978 from Moscow cables sent to the State Department in Washington as well as to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv that John Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible," and not only did it withhold that evidence from the defense, but dumped some of it, including original documents, into its trash bins. Furthermore, the garbage contents revealed that the OSI did not just conceal exonerating evidence, but manufactured false affidavits in collusion with the Israeli prosecution.

In reading this book, one gets the impression that, far from being intimidated, the author relished being "Satan's lawyer" and "the most hated man in Israel." Courage, not modesty, is Sheftel's cardinal virtue. But then, Demjanjuk's attorney has nothing to be modest about. After all, he took on single-handedly his country's justice system and formidable mass media and won unprecedented decisions on both counts, debunking firmly entrenched myths that Israel possesses a model justice system and an independent, unbiased press.

Neither death threats, unrelenting harassment by the judges, daily vilification in the media, suspicious suicide of a prominent colleague on the eve of the appeal, an acid attack by an alleged Holocaust survivor, which nearly left him blind; not even the wrath of his beloved mother could stay this intrepid attorney from the case. And in the darkest hour, when all seemed lost -- there being no time to prepare the appeal -- fortune and history intervened. A timely heart attack of one of the judges granted a crucial respite and the collapse of the Soviet Union made it possible to access KGB archives which established conclusively Demjanjuk's innocence and forced the Israeli Supreme Court's hand.

Sheftel delights in getting back at his opponents and detractors, especially his nemesis, the presiding Supreme Court Justice Dov Levin. The chapter entitled "Dovele" is written as "sweet revenge" for the many humiliations, trials and tribulations Sheftel endured, and may be of particular interest to the legal community in North America. It will shock those who choose to read it, for the instances of judicial misconduct are legion.

For example, immediately after affixing his signature to the verdict, Judge Levin set off on a lecture tour of the United States, undeterred by the fact that the Demjanjuk case was still sub judice. Ohio's Plain Dealer cited one of his many legal gems, namely: "We cannot be impressed by someone claiming 'I am innocent.' Innocence must be proven." Sheftel is angered and embittered by "the cowardice and hypocrisy of the thousands of the Israeli legal community." The only one who dared to speak out publicly was the highly respected, retired Judge Haim Cohen. In an interview with the newspaper Al Hasharon, Judge Cohen stated: "It was a spectacular for the people. Any resemblance to justice was purely coincidental."

'Death to Ukrainians' The reader will be revolted, along with Lord Denning, revisiting the reading of the sentence after which a jubilant mob danced and shouted: "Death, death," "Death to Ivan," "Death to the defense attorney," "Death to all Ukrainians ..." It may be recalled that Lord Denning condemned the grotesque spectacle in Jerusalem as "contrary to international law" and showing "signs of racial and political vengeance." (The Daily Telegraph [London], April 28, 1988).

With the exception of Chrystia Freeland's review in The Financial Times (London), December 10-11, 1994, Sheftel's work continues to be ignored, except in Israel Demjanjuk's miraculous acquittal appears to have put a damper on the projected multimillion "Ivan the Terrible"/Demjanjuk entertainment industry. The only ones benefitting are those who conspired to send an innocent man to a horrific death by hanging.

Lessons In spite of the fact that the Sixth Circuit Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, found "fraud upon the court," the OSI is still in business, and the chief architects of the Demjanjuk affair not only remain unpunished, but have found lucrative employment elsewhere. While in Israel, Judges Zvi Tal and Dalia Dorner were elevated to the Supreme Court.

The book is highly recommended, especially to our legal Ukrainian community. There was quality input by Ukrainian attorneys into Demjanjuk's defense. Paul Chumak of Toronto did a first-rate job as one of a team of Demjanjuk's lawyers and the late Jaroslaw Dobrowolskyj of Detroit played a crucial role in uncovering evidence which cleared John Demjanjuk. Others labored behind the scenes. This reviewer is, therefore, saddened by the fact that our legal community continues to pretend that the Demjanjuk affair involved one individual Ukrainian, and refuses even to acknowledge the existence of a collective indictment against Ukrainians. Let me cite from pages 4 and 7 (English translation) of the Indictment by the State of Israel versus Ivan (John) Demjanjuk, Criminal Case 373/86:

The auxiliaries played an essential role in the annihilation of the Jews; without them, the commanders of Operation Reinhardt could not have carried out their plan... These auxiliaries, in the main Ukrainians, worked with SS personnel in carrying out all the acts of annihilation, murder and oppression committed against the Jewish victims in the camps. May this indictment, which still stands, serve as a challenge to our legal community to right a historical wrong.

[William Wallace]

</font size>Click on the allegation of your choice:

Allied with Fringe Anti-Semite Socialists -- Did Venereal Disease Keep Him Out of the Army? -- Watergate -- dirty tricks, IRS abuses, obstruction of justice -- Disgruntled Staff -- Hypocrite -- Praise for Hitler -- Racist -- Holocaust Revisionism -- Anti-Semitic Statements -- Defender of Nazis -- Sheltered Washington Insider -- All talk, no action (the Republican Jesse Jackson) -- Flirting With Fascism -- Assaulted Police Officers -- Good Points -- Character -- Quotes -- Sources

[CWOJackson]

That's great...Pat never did seem to learn that lesson. Glad a seven year old could.

[Pelham]

...which Pat J Puchanan hasn't got a clue about how to govern while his "vice-presidential" candidate is engaged in organizing anti-American rallies.

Ezola Foster was Buchanan's VP. Leona Fulani (sp) is engaged in anti-American rallies. I know, I know, to you Pat-haters all black women look alike....

[CWOJackson]

Pat calls for his own brand of holy jihad and his followers obey...without question.