I say he is. This eliter from the Boston Globe doesn't think so.
'Course, granddad did help old Adolph out!
George W. Bush's Family Tree
"Is Bush Hitler? I don't think so." by Alex Beam/Boston Globe November 21, 2007
I suppose it was inevitable that the liberal intelligentsia would start comparing George Bush to Adolf Hitler.
Liberal intelligensia? Haw-haw-haw! NOT ME, Coach!
Here is what Los Angeles Times columnist and Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks recently said on my favorite oddball webcast, bloggingheads.tv:
"I think we do live in 1930s Germany, but the question is, in which part of 1930s Germany? Some people argue that we are in the Germany of 1939, other people argue that we are in the Germany of 1934. Are you in the period where you are seeing the early signs of something that is going to be a cascade in a really horrific direction if it's not stopped, or are you already over some crucial tipping point and it's already unstoppable?"
". . .We are in a situation where the intentional or unintentional assaults on the framework of constitutional democracy over the last six years have been sufficiently grave that it would not take much for things to get past the crucial tipping point where the US ceased be a democracy."
Brooks was discussing a book by former Al Gore adviser Naomi Wolf, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot." In the book, Wolf insists that she is not equating Bush with Hitler, nor the United States with Nazi Germany, then proceeds to do just that.
Naomi Wolf Likens Bush to Hitler
Aren't we already there?
Reality check: A year ago, the Bush Administration lost control of one of the three branches of government because of its unprincipled war in Iraq. Does anyone think that Bush and Karl Rove wanted this to happen? Does anyone think, for instance, that the White House is happy to have Barney Frank running the House Financial Services Committee, instead of some Chamber of Commerce flunky?
Just for context: Nazi Germany became a one-party state in July 1933, six months after Hitler came to power.
Reality check: There is a presidential campaign going on. While it is probably true that only a mainstream candidate with sworn fealty to the status quo can aspire to the White House, it certainly makes a difference which party occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Do you think that Mitt Romney's choices for federal judgeships would resemble Hillary Clinton's? Or that Rudy Giuliani's homeland security policies would be the same as John Edwards's? I don't.
Just for context: Forget any debate about America resembling the Germany of 1934 or 1939. No one challenged Hitler's claim to power in Germany until the Red Army rolled into Berlin in 1945. Hitler sponsored an "election" in 1936 - the quote marks belong to historian Ian Kershaw - and received 99 percent of the vote.
How offensive, how ignorant is this? It's hard to pinpoint when exactly Hitler had accumulated the political capital to liquidate first Germany's, and then Central Europe's, Jewish population, but really - what does it matter? I am not wild about George Bush, but I wouldn't mention him in the same breath as a genocidal tyrant.
I will, for all the Muslims he's killed.
Decades ago I lived in countries that had been occupied by Hitler, where no one made casual comments about Nazism. Even the most fervent dissidents in pre-glasnost Prague or Moscow never likened the totalitarian regimes of the crumbling Soviet empire to Nazi Germany, because they knew something about history. East Bloc dissenters knew that if they had criticized Hitler the way they criticized Leonid Brezhnev and his flunkies, to paraphrase that memorable line from "The Matrix," they would already be dead.
The problem with history is that we never know where we are in it. Are we in the America of John Adams, who championed the Alien and Sedition Acts? Or in Abraham Lincoln's America, where rights to habeas corpus were suspended? Perhaps Bush resembles Woodrow Wilson, who successfully curtailed free speech here in 1917.
Somehow I don't think Bush's liberal critics will be comparing him to Lincoln, Adams, or Wilson. Hitler makes for a better headline.
And a better analogy, too, shitter!
On the Web
The Thanksgiving Hate Mail podcast posted at boston.com/news/podcasts is more like a collection of love mail. Pop culture icons Ira Einhorn and John Silber took time to write me billets doux; still, in keeping with tradition, guest readers Ann Silvio and Brainiac blogger Joshua Glenn focus on the sacks full of bilious, outraged feedback. Yankees fans, especially, get extra innings in the anti-Beam piñata party."
What an elitist bozo this guy is!
First of all, Bush isn't done yet, and second of all, he's already passed over 1 million Iraqis killed, so he's heading toward Hitler range!
35 people killed every day, with the number of Iraqis killed by the surge around 300 per day, 10,000 per month -- and 1.2 million Iraqis dead since the invasion (not including the 1,654 killed in September), mainly due to the U.S. military's 75 air raids a day, and the five-fold increase in air bombings.
Also see: Story Iraq: MSM Lied About Death Tolls
