Well, that's one Democrat who gets it...
No problema, we will then have a nice large base of operations in Iraq, now won't we?
Not to mention CONTROL of 10% of the world's oil. These are consequences of your actions and lack of actions on our behalf, Saudis. Your power over us will have been ended.
We are witnessing the dawn of a new Middle Eastern dynamic, realigned in our favor by their own dastardly acts.
George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Perhaps a corollary of that axiom should be: Those who know only historical slogans should quit using them to support their causes.
For example, amateur historians remind us impatiently that the reason Iraq must disarm (which no one else is doing) is that Hussein promised to disarm at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
Of course, they neglect to tell us that the "promise" was made at the point of a gun. You don't "freely" give your money to a mugger when he says, "Your money or your life." Promises and actions that are coerced are morally meaningless.
But citing Hussein's promise isn't the only way history is misused.
History is invoked to justify the U.S. starting a war against a foreign country (Iraq in 1991, Serbia in 1999, and now Iraq again) because "history tells us" we have to stop the latest incarnation of Adolf Hitler before he proceeds to conquer the entire world. As though Serbia or Iraq could be compared to the power of Hitler's Germany.
And the history-sloganeers remind us over and over that millions of lives would have been saved if only the Allies had stopped Hitler at Munich.
A historical slogan can be a wonderful thing. It allows you to reduce all the complexities created by billions of people to a simple equation of Good vs. Evil, white & black, us & them.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FRIENDS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN, THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY, A.N.S.W.E.R., HOLLYWOOD AND THE GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE.
BUMP!
But the former Mayor crosses the line of rational debate, when he compares the Iraqi problem with that of Socialist Germany, in 1938. The Iraqi people have not exhibited much technological expertise, and very little innovation in several centuries. The Germans in 1938 were among the very top nations in technology, and were in fact about to break out of the pack of major nations in aeronautics. Had it not been for a mistaken turn in their nuclear program, they might have beaten us to the Atomic bomb.
Iraq has had to hire European technicians to assist in all of the various mischief making weaponry programs, that have us so concerned. The only comparative testing of Iraqi average intelligence, of which I am familiar, shows the usual gap, found between the First and Third worlds. Were it not for oil, it is unlikely that Iraq would have ever obtained any sort of position in the modern world.
I do not say this to be unkind, but to make an historic point, relevant to Koch's silly comparison. While I am sure that there are well educated Iraqis of culture and intelligence, the population as a whole, has not on average displayed anything like the German population as to a capacity for modern warfare.
Hitler in 1938 was about to embark on a campaign to conquer all of Europe. In what followed, he came closer to succeeding, than a casual view of the past might indicate. Sadam Hussein is a mischief maker, par excellent, but he is no potential world conquerer. In his own immediate region, he is probably no match for the Turks and probably not for the Israelis or Iranians.
This is not to say that he should not be curbed, before he arms terrorists, with whom he identifies, with dangerous pathogens or chemical or nuclear devices. But let us keep things in proportion. We lose our credibility, when we so grossly exaggerate.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site