The Real World War II Analogy

Many people have been making the analogy between Saddam Hussein and the appeasement of Hitler to try to justify the 2003 War in Iraq. I feel, and thankfully many others do now, that this analogy is not only poor, but could be replaced by a far more accurate but darker one.

This is a poor analogy, due mainly to the lack of foreign aggression shown by Hussein, that was shown by Hitler. Hitler outlined his intention of lebensraum in Mein Kampf, and then enacted it with his actions in the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally, in what proved to be the tipping point for Chamberlain et al, Poland.

Saddam, a tyrant that he was, showed no such aggression of late. He did in 1991, and the appropriate response was taken.

I saw an article on Digg recently about the similarities between pre-War Nazi Germany and modern day America. I've been saying this for a long time, this is scarily similar.

Wether we have had our Reichstag burning down yet (the event that caused Hitler to assume dictatorial control), I am not sure. Some point to 9/11, but for me I feel that if some such event does happen, it will happen closer to the 2008 elections.

We also have stark and dangerous similarities between the treatment of Muslims and Jews, in America and Nazi Germany respectively. As outlined in the article above, and I'm not suprised, many Americans seem to be deadly afraid of Islam.

This fear has been created and perpetuated by the American government. From the buzz words that have grown slowly more and more about Islam; 'terrorists' lead to 'religious extremists' lead to 'Islamic radical' which lead to the plainly idiotic 'Islamic Fascist'.

Terrorism is deadly, but compared to the amount of attacks and death that acutally happed, to the amount of deaths from automobiles, smoking, heart attacks etc it is hardly a threat, but yet most Americans would point to it as a huge problem.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I really feel that if Bush doesn't give up power, America is in for some dark times ahead.