More Politics

An article in the Washington Post today reports that President Bush is invoking the historical memory of the Holocaust and Hitler as fuel to bash the Middle East and stir up animosity toward his rivals, particularly, and predictably, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain their words away. This is natural," Bush was planning to say. "But it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century."

He goes on: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along...We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Comparing events and governments today to World War II and the Holocaust are disingenuous for several reasons, not least because it completely ignores the unique historical moment in which Hitler and the Holocaust occurred. And also not only because it is a clear, and by this point hackneyed strategy for fearmongering. Even more than all that, the real point behind Bush's statement, that every government which "espouses hatred" is equivalent to Hitler, is ludicrous. World leaders espousing hatred and violence is, unfortunately, an everyday occurrence. Here are just a few examples... In Russia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, of course, in the United States.

The memories of the Holocaust are being, and have been, manipulated in order to push an agenda, to allow Bush to spotlight the violent ravings of his rival governments, while covering up his own. A severe affront to those lost to genocide.