MSNBC: Of 330,000 plus responses over 85% want Bush Impeached... (1 Viewer)

[Mr. Paul Caruso]

>>The left has tried to imply for years that the Nazi's were a bunch of christian conservatives who believed in free trade.

Reb beat me to it, but perhaps people would prefer the usage of the term neo-nazi or ultra nationalist. Be it conservatism or nazism, it's all pretty much the opposite arm of anarchism. :rock:

>>Sorry BullDawg, you're wrong there. The only reason Saddam was in a box at that time was because of the sanctions. But he was slowly and surely buying his way out of the box. Oil for food money was flowing through the halls of Europe and the UN like water through the 17th Street canal breech. Annan's son was bought. High officials in the German and French governments were bought and paid for. The genie was about to be let out the bottle, and all evidence acquired since the war reveals the wmd programs were still in place and ready to kick back into action as soon as the reins were loosened. Hell, there was still wmd activity with all the sanctions and inspections in place. He was a dangerous madman. We live in a dangerous world. The problem no longer is planes flying into a highrise. It is biological agents in your water supply, nerve gas at your LSU game, or a mushroom cloud over your city. Think I'm exaggerating? There were folks who thought Osama was just a raving lunatic a decade ago when he started his rantings against the US(me included). I'm a believer now. I'm not sure what it will take to convince everyone, but I'm afraid for the consequences of not believing.

This is simply your opinion. You haven't really shown that he was wrong. Take a look at a Middle Eastern map and tell me how he was a threat to America. Seriously. His reach might have been 1,000 miles (at best) even with a WMD program. Israel? Yes. Jordan? Yes. Iran? Yes. But that's about it. I've provided a link for ease (possibly the map itself):

No way in hell is that "box" expanding. He had no mandate for anything but Kuwait and Israel. A missle attack on Israel appeases and buys street credit with pan-Arabia. An invasion of Kuwait (circa 1990) gets him access to the Gulf. Since Iraq was never known for its naval prowess, and because America would have simply destroyed him from thousands of miles away (Red Sea as in Gulf War 1) or from missles launched from perhaps even the Arabian Sea, he could not have threatened the Gulf States (Qatar, Bahrain, UAE). No way he could have done anything to destabilize Saudi Arabia except through funding of underground activity (and let's don't forget that the Saddam, King Faud, Shiek Zayed et al are also the sworn enemies of Al Queda).

You, as anyone else, are free to believe whatever you want as a rationalization for why we're in Iraq and to tie it into the greater war on terror. I, while supporting the overthrow of Saddam, can not be convinced that he would have ever (5, 10, 20 years) become a threat to the United States without aid from the likes of China or Russia (or any of the former USSR states possessing ICBM's). We, nor Israel, would never have allowed it and would have struck any potential importation of such weapons into Iraq. (We would obviously know about it).

JMO

TPS

Simply put, SH's plan was to make WMDs and sell them to anyone who could get them here.

If he had succeeded, it would have been a bad scene.

C

 

[THAJCODE]

 

[gavinj]

I understand this perspective, but way too many people assume that Nazisim was a complete rejection of socialism. It wasn't--it was his a brand of "national socialism," which some categorize as nationalist but not socialist. Well, it was national socialism in many respects regarding economic policy.

And I'm well aware of Hitler's Eugenics/social policy. I'm not casting Hitler in black and white terms. I'm pointing out that Hitler pretty much economically followed a modern socialist economic model, which would make him rather hypocritical given the inflammatory rhetoric he used to castigate socialists.
And arguably all economic policy is a "means to an end" regardless of the regime.

And yes, it's exactly how I have taught it, because there's scholarship which proves my argument.

Well, I know you're an expert on the subject and I'm just a guy. I really enjoy reading your stuff about history that you post here on the board and, you know, would never attempt to say that I know something about history that you don't know. My problem, I guess, is that I am going to be bothered by a historian just doing his job when it comes to this particular subject which is something I personally see as reductio ad Hitlerum. I agree with the Anti Defamation League's statement that was rebutted in the link you posted. I feel that associating Nazism with anything other than itself is a foolish practice for our future. You can teach kids about how Hitler was a socialist because he built a road or that he was actually in favor of democracy because he once asked for a show of hands during a meeting - who wants wiener schnitzel and who wants sauerbraten, I don't care. After a few generations of this, Nazism's evil is reduced to the point where it could regain mainstream footing. When your students hear "socialism" they think of it in terms of Bernie Sanders, a real-life muppet, and the modern European version of it, a collection of bleeding hearters. By taking such a cold, scientific view of Nazism like you would if you were talking about the economic factors that led to the Great Depression - I dunno, it just bothers me and I'm probably just overly sensitive to it which is probably my problem and I should just get over it. I am not a good enough writer or a learned enough man to really get my point across, honestly, and just like we don't know how bad the plagues were hundreds of years ago I guess people in the future will not understand what Hitler was really all about... talking about how he couldn't have been all that bad because he got the trains to run on time and other crap like that. I don't know, I've probably opened up the door 100 different ways for you to <--- MOD EDIT - Language - SBTB ---> me with your extensive knowledge, but I'm not pretending to know something here, man - I'm just telling you about what I feel - which is of no use to a historian looking at the minutia. I just hope the big picture isn't lost in the sort of natural whitewashing of time.