Monday, March 31, 2003

The Good Germans and the War at Home Everybody who has thought about Nazi Germany wonders why ordinary Germans did not do more to stop Hitler and the Holocaust. Two historical truths stand out. One is that many Germans did not care, or dismissed evidence of fascist depravity as being unimportant, excusable, not really true.  Germany spent a generation trying to understand how this could have happened.   The second truth is that some Germans actively supported Hitler, and were eager to go to war. Our number one job in the U.S. today is to not be good Germans. We have a monster for a President, whose religious fervor, hatred for democracy, and brutal lack of concern for lives of people different than him have made people around the world talk about Saddam, Hitler, and George Bush in the same breath. All represent an arrogance of power, some brutal by torture and direct killing, others brutal by sheer unequal firepower and willingness to wreak havoc on a defenseless population. I am again in Canada, and the thing that strikes me the most is the palpable fear people have of America.  People come up to me and repeat stories about Canadian snow birds in Florida who have nails put in their car tires.  About a Canadian trucker, who stops at the first gas station over the border, and is told he will not be served--to drive on.  There is real fear in Canada about the way in which their refusal to support the U.S. may come back to hurt them. In the business world, all people want to talk about is how Canadian trucks will be held up at the border, not allowed to pass, harassed, and have their trade disrupted because of American hatred. What does it mean when ordinary people, your friends and business colleagues, fear your country?  It means that it is time to stop being a Good German. I am an American, but I will take the EU policy of national integration and consensus, common laws, protection of individual rights and many other social protections over the "do or die" culture of the U.S. any day. Americans believe in their freedom, and in many ways America is one of the most libertarian countries in the world.  But the tide is running the other way.  Where Europe stands up to protect individual liberties, in terms of privacy, in terms of medical care, in terms of food and housing, the U.S. is undermining these rights on a daily basis. Today in Lexington I had a conversation with a member of the Town Celebration committee.  Our group, Lexington Justice and Peace Committee, with maybe 300 active members in a town of 30,000, requested permission to march in our annual patriots day parade.  We plan to carry signs suggesting true patriots love their country not their leaders, and carry signs based on our history, like "Don't fire unless fired upon." As is quoted in the tag line for this blog. The person I talked to was positively vituperative.  He hated the fact that we had been holding anti-war vigils on the Lexington Green for a year.  He said he was a Korean war veteran,  that the purpose of the parade was to support our troops, and that we would not be allowed.  When I challenged the basis on which he personally determined which groups marched and which didn't, he backed off, and said we could march at the end of the Parade. All of us have to claim this patriotic space.  The idea that America is nothing but a country of Thugs, who put nails in tires of Canadians, who bomb and kill innocents, but always claim it is a mistake, the idea that this aggressive, racist, jingoistic nationalism is the only true America makes me sick.  Before this argument tonight, our group was undecided about whether to march or not.  The attack on our right to do so made the march inevitable, and we will work to get hundreds of respected and well known people in town to join us. Germany once belonged to all Germans, including Jews and Communists.  Hitler took it from them, and made it only for the Master Race.  America still belongs to us all, but we are going to have to fight to keep it that way.   9:31:59 PM   comment []    The General Staff is Lying Here is what General Myers said as quoted in the New York Times today: General Myers, speaking on "Meet the Press" on NBC, said criticism of the war plan was not fair. "Nobody ever promised a short war," he said. "This is going to be a tough war, a tough slog yet, and no responsible official I know has ever said anything different." Speaking on "Face the Nation" on CBS, he said that Republican Guard strength had already been reduced by half. Yesterday, a friend who works at a major Boston financial institution told me that in a meeting the other day, his CEO said the following: The week before the war, Rumsfeld met with a number of CEO's from major American corporations to talk about the economic impact of the war, and discuss plans.  At that meeting where he was present, when asked how long the war would take, Rumsfeld replied about a week. Clearly the top leadership expected Iraq to collapse once they began the war.  The effort to cover this up, to deny that this was their original viewpoint, doesn't bode well for the truthfulness of subsequent statements. As to the pause, one reuters reporter embedded with troops near the front lines personally heard the commander tell his troops that the assult on Baghdad would not begin for 30 days or so.  This was reported in the on the Agonist.  One of the features of the Vietnam conflict was lies told by the Pentagon.  Is this happening again?  If so, how long before the American media catches on to it.   12:59:03 AM   comment []

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