[Politics] Condi Invokes Poor Understanding of History to Attack Dems
In it's continued effort's to prove Godwin's Law, the Bush Administration, via Secretary of State Condileeza Rice, has compared the Democratic Congress efforts to repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq War to a fictionalized change in course on the European front of World War II following the fall of Adolf Hitler. On Fox News Sunday yesterday, Rice said of the Democrats' move:Chris, it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change, then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown. It's a part of a continuum of what we're trying to do in Iraq.
Firstly, U.S. officials need to stop taking credit for overthrowing Hitler. It was not a unilateral effort on our part in any manner; it took a true allied force on several fronts. Secondly, if you are going to speak in such poor taste as to invoke Hitler to attack your opponents (and especially if you are Secretary of State), you should have some knowledge of history when you do so. I'm not sure if Condoleeza Rice is aware of it, but Germany did not end up a unified democracy following the collapse of Hitler's regime. I seem to recall that half of the country became communist and they erected a concrete wall dividing the two nations. Oh, and we did adopt a new approach. It was called The Marshall Plan. Look it up Condi, it might give you a some insight then next time you want to compare your fellow Americans to Hitler's allies.
Read Tim Grieve's take on Salon.com.
1 comments:
At the risk of sounding like I am defending the Bush administration here I have to say I don’t agree that Secretary Rice is being as a-historical here as you have made her out to be. Also I don’t really see how bringing up the fall of Hitler and post-war Germany is really an attempt to brand her Democratic rivals as being Nazis. Her main point is really about our efforts in post-war Germany, which was based on an alliance not much different then the coalition of countries in Iraq today, as being analogous to the occupation of Iraq. Indeed, after World War II the Allied Powers split more or less into two camps of East and West, dividing occupied Germany accordingly. The Western Camp was comprised of Britain, The United States, and eventually France. However since the vast majority of the resources allocated towards the Western controlled occupation came from the United States, as is the case in Iraq today, in many ways the U.S. was acting almost as “unilaterally” as it is now. As for the Soviet Union, it can hardly be said that in any practical sense it continued to act as an ally in the occupation of Germany. Therefore if unilateralism is the issue by which we measure the validity of Secretary Rice’s analogy than we can conclude that she is at least not wrong to use it in explaining the policies of the Bush administration.
There are also other ways in which the two occupations are potentially analogous to each other. For example, (and it may seem like I am putting things in simple terms of good verses evil, which is not my intent or belief,) the goal of the U.S. in Germany, as it is to a large extent in Iraq today, was to rebuild a society. In contrast the Soviet goal was to punish Germany. This was not entirely unjustified. An estimated 20 million Soviets were killed in the war and much of the Soviet Union had been destroyed. As a result they used what was left of Germany’s industrial capabilities, most of which happened to be positioned in the Soviet controlled areas of the country, to help rebuild their own country, rather than using it to rebuild Germany. Similarly, although the justification is different, the goal of our current “enemies” in Iraq, at least in part, is likewise to hinder the rebuilding of Iraqi society. This is also certainly the case in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless it is annoying to hear members of the Bush administration repeatedly use the post-War Germany analogy over and over again when it has become clear by now that the analogy no longer fits. Back in 2003 and even 2004 when the current situation of outright civil war was not entirely foreseeable, the comparison made more sense. But as time has progressed the analogy has grown weaker and weaker where now at this point it borders on the absurd.
In Germany the U.S. was faced with the challenge of rebuilding a society that had been wholly defeated in a war started by its people. However the key issue, in terms of the appropriateness of the analogy, is less about how defeated the Germans were and more so that there was present a unifying national concept of a German people. In fact, in many respects it had been the overemphasis of the idea of a German people, or Volk, which had lead to out break of the War and the Holocaust.
The same cannot be said to be true of Iraq because there is no such thing as “The People” of Iraq. With Saddam gone and his party marginalized, Iraqi society has descended into functioning on its basic ethnic and tribal components. In turn creating many layers of social division far more complicated than the overly simplified terms of Sunni, Shia, and Kurd that we normally hear in the media. As a result the U.S. has failed, where it ultimately succeeded in Germany, to create a body politic that can act as a legitimate sovereign.
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