Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (4487)	3/11/2003 12:45:41 AM
From: Stephen O	Respond to of 8683

Antiwar message has familiar ring By MARCUS GEE Monday, March 10, 2003 - Page A6 Is this the 1930s? Is Saddam Hussein today's Hitler? Are those who oppose the looming war on Iraq appeasers? Don't be silly, say those in the antiwar camp. Saddam Hussein is not remotely as dangerous as Hitler and those who march against war merely want to give peace a chance, not appease a tyrant. So any comparison is absurd. But is it? Look closely and there are some striking similarities between then and now. History never repeats itself exactly. And, as they say, Mr. Hussein is no Hitler. But, then, in the middle of the 1930s, Hitler was no Hitler either. He was merely a dictator with aggressive rearmament plans and a thirst to avenge his country's defeat in a previous war. Although Hitler had made no great secret of his plans to dominate Europe and solve the "Jewish problem," few predicted that within a few years he would control most of the continent and perpetrate the Holocaust. No one today expects Mr. Hussein to go that far. Iraq, we are told, is a broken Third World country facing the most dominant power in history, the United States. But an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons would arguably possess more destructive power than Hitler's armies ever did. And given his background, there is every reason to believe the Iraqi dictator would use that power. Like Hitler, Mr. Hussein hungers to expand his country's borders. He has already attacked two of his neighbours, Iran and Kuwait, to that end. Like Hitler, he has delusions of grandeur. Hitler compared himself to Frederick the Great; Mr. Hussein poses as Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem; or as Saladin, the Muslim general who beat back the Crusaders. Like Hitler, he worships at the altar of power and believes that force and violence are the ultimate tools of the successful ruler. His cruelty toward Iraq's Kurds alone exceeds what Hitler had done to German Jews before the start of the Second World War. Like Hitler, he is a gambler who constantly tests the will of his opponents. Hitler took an enormous chance when he reoccupied the Rhineland, guessing that the Allied powers would not react. Mr. Hussein took an equal chance when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. Mr. Hussein's rule, U.S. author Kenneth Pollack says, has "been characterized by miscalculation, extreme risk-taking, a total disregard for human life [and] a willingness to suffer tremendous damage in pursuit of his goals." That makes him very difficult to handle, because you can't bet on him acting prudently in the face of superior force. Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel-Prize-winning author, refuses to compare Mr. Hussein directly to Hitler, saying Hitler was a unique evil. But he sees parallels between Hitler's appeasers and the antiwar camp today. He supports the war against Iraq because "it is the moral duty to intervene when evil has power and uses it." The leaders of the antiwar camp stoutly deny they are bowing to evil. But, then, the 1930s antiwar camp denied it too. Then, as now, the public was overwhelmingly against war. A private British referendum in 1934-35 known as the Peace Ballot gathered 10 million votes against war. Four years later, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich after the betrayal of Czechoslovakia to herald "peace in our time," the crowds shouted "good old Neville." Today's antiwar leaders are just as popular. Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, won applause when he spoke out at the United Nations Security Council last month. Mr. Chamberlain and his fellow appeasers were not the chinless weaklings of the usual caricature. They were sincere men who acknowledged that Hitler was a threat but believed passionately that he could be stopped without war. They believed that the time was not yet right for confrontation, that the threat could be contained peacefully, that the risk of using force was higher than the risk the force was meant to address. They believed that war was always a failure. Sound familiar? mgee@globeandmail.ca