Why Aren’t They Rallying to the Call?
By SEAN HANNON

February 5, 2003

 We have heard so much in the press these days about how Saddam Hussein is the new Hitler. One can honestly argue for the resemblance. They easily share the deserved title of brutal dictator, that’s a no-brainer. They seem to share a penchant for ethnic cleansing. And of course Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait has been likened to Hitler’s march into Poland and beyond. What I am wondering then is why, if Saddam Hussein truly is Hitler reborn... why is the world not buying it? More to the point, why is much of Europe more fearful of what America is doing than what Saddam may or may not be doing? What could possibly be making US more of a concern to them than a brutal Iraqi dictator with dreams of world domination?

 Perhaps to the rest of the world, our country’s actions and our threatened actions are bearing a closer resemblance to Herr Hitler than the man in the cross-hairs. Take a moment and try to imagine how we must look to their eyes:

 --- From the U.N. appearance to the State of the Union, the world has listened incredulously to this administration’s trumpeting of America’s superiority over all peoples, and nearly every nation was shocked and insulted by our cavalier dismissal of their concerns of the impact of war as “irrelevant”. Hitler likewise sold his people on the notion of their Aryan superiority as a first step toward world aggression.

 --- This administration again alarmed the world by declaring a new American policy of pre-emptive first strike based on nothing... on “maybe”, “possibly”, and “we’re scared you might...” No proof needed and nukes are not off the table. We are on the verge of acting out this arrogantly aggressive policy for real.  Hitler terrorized an entire world that wondered what country would be next on his hit parade.

 --- The world knows that when this administration “liberates” the Iraqi people, within a few days we will have incinerated most of the children, their parents and grandparents, in the hundreds of thousands, and left the lucky survivors in smouldering rubble to die of disease and starvation. We call it “collateral damage”... the world calls it genocide. Hitler’s high score went into the millions, and took a bit longer, hampered as he was by 1940’s technology, but his heart was in the same place.

 --- The world knows that after this administration frees the Iraqi people from this dictator, we will install our own military commandpost in Baghdad to insure that proper reparations are made to the victims of the first Gulf War (i.e. ExxonMobil). Hitler installed a few oversight committees in his occupied countries too.

 --- To sell the war to American public, this administration has taken a page out of the Herman Goering’s propaganda playbook:

 “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 Perhaps the reason the world has not rallied around the United States of America this time is because we are beginning to no longer resemble the United States of America.