Two Popular leaders---Much alike. I think we can all agree,

[Guest Raymond]

1. Like Hitler, President Bush was not elected by a majority, but was

forced to engage in political maneuvering in order to gain office.

 

2. Like Hitler, Bush began to curtail civil liberties in response to a

well-publicized disaster, in Hitler's case the Reichstag fire, in

Bush's case the 9-11 catastrophe.

 

3. Like Hitler, Bush went on to pursue a reckless foreign policy

without the mandate of the electorate and despite the opposition of

most foreign nations.

 

4. Like Hitler, Bush has increased his popularity with conservative

voters by mounting an aggressive public relations campaign against

foreign enemies. Just as Hitler cited international communism to

justify Germany's military buildup, Bush has used Al Qaeda and the so-

called Axis of Evil to justify our current military buildup.

Paradoxically none of the nations in this axis--Iraq, Iran and North

Korea--have had anything to do with each other.

 

5.Like Hitler, Bush has promoted militarism in the midst of economic

recession (or depression as it was called during the thirties). First

he used war preparations to help subsidize defense industries

(Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc.) and presumably the rest of

the economy on a trickle-down basis. Now he turns to the very same

corporations to rebuild Iraq, again without competitive bidding and at

extravagant profit levels.

 

6. Like Hitler, Bush displays great populist enthusiasm in his

patriotic speeches, but primarily serves wealthy investors who

subsidize his election campaigns and share with him their comfortable

lifestyle. As he himself jokes, he treats these individuals at the

pinnacle of our economy as his true political "base."

 

7. Like Hitler, Bush envisages our nation's unique historic destiny

almost as a religious cause sanctioned by God. Just as Hitler did for

Germany, he takes pride in his "providential" role in spreading his

version of Americanism throughout the entire world.

 

8. Like Hitler, Bush promotes a future world order that guarantees his

own nation's hegemonic supremacy rather than cooperative harmony under

the authority of the United Nations (or League of Nations).

 

9. Like Hitler, Bush quickly makes and breaks diplomatic ties, and he

offers generous promises that he soon abandons, as in the cases of

Mexico, Russia, Afghanistan, and even New York City. The same goes for

U.S. domestic programs. Once Bush was elected, many leaders of these

programs learned to dread his making any kind of an appearance to

praise their success, since this was almost inevitably followed by

severe cuts in their budgets.

 

10. Like Hitler, Bush scraps international treaties, most notably the

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of

Land Mines, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Kyoto Global Warming

Accord, and the International Criminal Court.

 

11. Like Hitler, Bush repeats lies often enough that they come to be

accepted as the truth. Bush and his spokesmen argued, for example,

that they had taken every measure possible to avoid war, than an

invasion of Iraq would diminish (not intensify) the terrorist threat

against the U.S., that Iraq was linked with Al Qaeda, and that nothing

whatsoever had been achieved by U.N. inspectors to warrant the

postponement of U.S. invasion plans. All of this was false. They also

insisted that Iraq hid numerous weapons it did not possess since the

mid-190s, and they refused to acknowledge the absence of a nuclear

weapons program in Iraq since the early nineties. As perhaps to be

expected, they indignantly accused others of deception and

evasiveness.

 

12. Like Hitler, Bush incessantly shifted his arguments to justify

invading Iraq--from Iraq's WMD threat to the elimination of Saddam

Hussein, to his supposed Al Qaeda connection, to the creation of Iraqi

democracy in the Middle East as a model for neighboring states, and

back again to the WMD threat. As soon as one excuse for the war was

challenged, Bush advanced to another, but only to shift back again at

another time.

 

13. Like Hitler, Bush and his cohorts emphasize the ruthlessness of

their enemies in order to justify their own. Just as Hitler cited the

threat of communist violence to justify even greater violence on the

part of Germany, the bush team justified the invasion of Iraq by

emphasizing Hussein's crimes against humanity over the past twenty-

five years. However, these crimes were for the most part committed

when Iraq was a client-ally of the U.S. Our government supplied

Hussein with illegal weapons (poison gas included), and there were

sixty U.S. advisors in Iraq when these weapons were put to use (see NY

Times, Aug. 18, 1992). U.S. aid to Iraq was actually doubled

afterwards despite disclaimers from Washington that our nation opposed

their use. President Reagan's special envoy Donald Rumsfeld personally

informed Hussein of this one hundred percent increment during one of

his two trips to Iraq at the time. He also told Hussein not to take

U.S. disclaimers seriously.

 

14. Like Hitler, Bush takes pride in his status as a "War President,"

and his global ambition makes him perhaps the most dangerous president

in our nation's history, a "rogue" chief executive capable of waging

any number of illegal preemptive wars. He fully acknowledges his

willingness to engage in wars of "choice" as well as wars of

necessity. Sooner or later this choice will oblige universal

conscription as well as a full-scale war economy.

 

15. Like Hitler, Bush continues to pursue war without cutting back on

the peacetime economy. Additional to unprecedented low interest rates

bestowed by the Federal Reserve, he has actually cut federal taxes

twice by substantial amounts, especially for the top one percent of

U.S. taxpayers, while conducting an expensive invasion and an even

more expensive occupation of a hostile nation. As a result, President

Clinton's $350 billion budget surplus has been reduced to a $450

billion deficit, comprising an unprecedented $800 billion decline in

less than four years. At the same time the U.S. dollar has steadily

dropped against currencies of both Europe and Japan.

 

16. Like Hitler, Bush possesses a war machine much bigger and more

effective than the military capabilities of other nations. With the

extra financing obliged by the defeat and occupation of Iraq, Bush now

relies on a "defense" budget well in excess of the combined military

expenditures of the rest of the world. Moreover, the $416 billion

defense package passed last week by Congress will probably need to be

supplemented before the end of the year.

 

17. Like Hitler, bush depends on an axis of collaborative allies,

which he describes as a "coalition of the willing," in order to give

the impression of a broad popular alliance. These allies include the

U.K. as compared to Mussolini's Italy, and Spain and Bulgaria, as

compared to, well, Spain and Bulgaria, both of which were aligned with

Germany during the thirties and World War II. As a result of their

cooperation, Prime Minister Blair's diplomatic reputation has been

ruined in England, and a surprising election defeat has produced an

unfriendly government in Spain. The Philippines have withdrawn their

troops from Iraq to save the life of a hostage, and other defections

can be expected in the near future.

 

18. Like Hitler, Bush is willing to go to war over the objections of

the U.N. (League of Nations). His Iraq invasion was illegal and

therefore a war crime as explained by Articles 41 and 42 of the U.N.

Charter, which require two votes, not one, by the Security Council

before any state takes such an action. First a vote is needed to

explore all possibilities short of warfare (in Iraq's case through the

use of U.N. inspectors), and once this has been shown to be fruitless,

a second vote is needed to permit military action. U.S. and U.K.

delegates at the Security Council prevented this second vote once it

was plain they lacked a majority. This was because other nations on

the Security Council were satisfied with the findings of U.N.

inspectors that no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found.

Minus this second vote, the invasion was illegal. Bush also showed in

the process that he has no qualms about bribing, bullying, and

insulting U.N. members, even tapping their telephone lines. This was

done with undecided members of the Security Council as well as the

U.N. Secretary General when the U.S.-U.K. resolution was debated

preceding the invasion.

 

19. Like Hitler, Bush launches unilateral invasions on a supposedly

preemptive basis. Just as Hitler convinced the German public to think

of Poland as a threat to Germany in 1939 (for example in his Sept. 19

speech), Bush wants Americans to think of Iraq as having been a

"potential" threat to our national security--indeed as one of the

instigators of the 9-11 attack despite a complete lack of evidence to

support this claim.

 

20. Like Hitler, Bush depends on a military strategy that features a

"shock and awe" blitzkrieg beginning with devastating air strikes,

then an invasion led by heavy armored columns.

 

21. Like Hitler, Bush is willing to inflict high levels of bloodshed

against enemy nations. Between 20,000 and (more probably) 37,000 are

now estimated to have been killed, as much as a ro-1 kill ratio

compared to the more than 900 Americans killed. In other words, for

every U.S. fatality, probably as many as forty Iraqi have died.

 

22. Like Hitler, Bush is perfectly willing to sacrifice life as part

of his official duty. This would be indicated by the unprecedented

number of prisoners executed during his service as governor of Texas.

Under no other governor in the history of the United States were so

many killed.

 

23. Like Hitler, Bush began warfare on a single front (Al Qaeda

quartered in Afghanistan), but then expanded it to a second front with

Iraq, only to be confronted with North Korea and Iran as potential

third and fourth fronts. Much the same thing happened to Hitler when

he advanced German military operations from Spain to Poland and

France, then was distracted by Yugoslavia before invading the USSR in

1941. Today, bush seems prevented by the excessive costs of the Iraqi

debacle from going to war elsewhere if reelected, but not through any

lack of desire.

 

24. Like Hitler, Bush has no qualms about imposing "regime change" by

installing Quisling-style client governments backed by a U.S. military

occupation with both political and economic control entirely in the

hands of Americans. It is no surprise that Iyad Alawi, Iraq's current

temporary prime minister, was once affiliated with the CIA and has

been reliably reported by the Australian press to have executed six

hooded prisoners with a handgun to their heads just a day or two

before his appointment a couple weeks ago.

 

25. Like Hitler, Bush curtails civil liberties in captive nations and

depends on detention centers (i.e., concentration camps) such as a

Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and any number of secret interrogation centers

across the world. Prisoners at the camps go unidentified and have no

legal rights as ordinarily guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions. They

have also been detained indefinitely (for 2