Re: 20/7/03:IRAQ THE HISTORY OF RESISTANCE - WWII is over guess who won
- From: "pong" <pong944@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:51:35 -0800
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/shaffer4.html
World War II Is Finally Over: Hitler Won!
by Butler Shaffer
When the year 1999 was winding down, many people were asking such questions
as "who was the most important person of (a) this passing millennium, and
(b) the 20th century?" I had no hesitation in answering both questions: (a)
was Johannes Gutenberg, whose invention of movable type was one of the four
major contributions to the "information revolution" through which mankind
has long been engaged (the other three being the creation of language,
mathematical analysis, and computerized technology), while (b) was Adolf
Hitler. Gutenberg's invention was most beneficial to mankind, having
facilitated the decentralization of information and, with it, helping to
produce the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and
the Industrial Revolution. Hitler's contributions were of a destructive and
dehumanizing nature but, in terms of social impact, defined not only the
last two-thirds of the 20th century, but are serving as a model for the 21st
as well.
Let me not be misunderstood on this point: that I consider Hitler to have
had the most significant influence on the twentieth century is not to praise
the man, but only to acknowledge that he, above all other human beings, did
more to make the twentieth century world what it was: a century of seemingly
endless wars, collective mindsets, vicious tyrannies, and genocidal
butcheries, all of which combined to produce the deaths of some 200 million
persons, and make of human society a continuing war of all against all.
Consider, if you will, these consequences of Adolf Hitler's practices.
Research into the development of nuclear weaponry was undertaken principally
as a response to the fear that Hitler would try to "take over" the rest of
the world. The development of rocketry as an intercontinental weapons system
came about as a desperate effort by Hitler to overcome the insufficiency of
his more conventional weapons. We can now thank this man for introducing
into our world ICBMs and the threat of nuclear annihilation!
Because of his barbaric treatment of Jews, the state of Israel came into
existence, the consequence of which continues to find violent expression
throughout the Middle East, and is related to the current "war against
terrorism." Had Hitler's regime refrained from persecuting Jews, there would
probably have been less of a felt need for a Jewish homeland.
The unanticipated results of Nazism reach even more deeply into the fabric
of our present world. The Nuremburg principles, along with an increased
demand for some kind of "world government" to prosecute "war criminals,"
have their origins in Hitler's practices. Another result of Nazi oppression
is found, I believe, in the post-World War II "civil rights" movement.
Because people had seen, in Hitler's policies, what can happen when state
power confronts racial/ethnic/religious/sexual orientation groupings, civil
rights groups found a willingness on the part of many people to forcibly
exorcise from society any tendencies to discriminate on such grounds. Even
such modern phenomena as "political correctness," "affirmative action"
programs, "racial quotas," "hate crimes" legislation, as well as the
fragmentation of modern society into politicized group identities, all trace
their origins to Hitler. Because of our proper hostility to Hitler's
bigotry, we now find ourselves in a culture obsessed with the
racial/ethnic/religious/sexual orientation characteristics of people.
Other social and political issues can be traced back to der Fuhrer. A
dedicated nonsmoker and public health advocate, he supported government
eugenics and cancer research (although opposing the use of animals in such
research); restrictions on the use of asbestos, pesticides, radiation, and
tobacco; government established occupational health and safety standards;
environmental and conservationist programs, as well as the promotion of
whole-grain foods and soybeans. He also put into effect one of the most
pervasive gun-control programs.
Does this mean that one who favors any programs such as these is a Nazi, an
apologist for the horrors for which this man was responsible? Of course not.
What it does mean, however, is that his programs emerged from a mindset
quite similar to one that has been prevalent in modern society for many
decades: a desire to cleanse the world of any and all imperfections and
undesirable elements. In modern obsessions with health - wherein any
condition or practice that renders the world less than one hundred percent
hygienic must be forcefully eradicated - we find the same mania for
sterilization that drove Hitler. Such an attitude was well-expressed by the
late Alan Watts who spoke of people who want "to scrub the universe."
We are told that if we can just get rid of tobacco, and guns, and people who
"hate," and red meat, and research on animals, and pornography, and
polluters, and lumber companies, and feminists, and nuclear power plants,
and people with religious convictions, and drug use, and homosexuality, and
(the list is endless), all of our social problems will be resolved. If we
can just purify our world, to make it perfectly safe, healthy, moral, and
clean, we can then get on with living.
What we fail to see in all of this - just as the German people failed to see
in Hitler's programs - was that making the world "healthy" invariably came
down to ridding it of "disease," and that undesirable people were all too
easily defined as diseases to be quarantined (such as in concentration
camps) for the protection of others. Such "undesirables" can take the form
of homosexuals in Hitler's Germany, or the modern-day drug users whose
bodies have contributed to making the United States the world's leader in
the percentage of its population in prisons! Nor should we overlook the
parallels between 1930s eugenicists - trying to isolate hereditary factors
that would impede the development of a "master race" - and modern scientists
who, through DNA research, work to identify and eradicate "defective genes,"
to the end that humanity may be improved.
What Adolf Hitler provided, if only we had taken the opportunity of
observing it closely, was a playing out of the "dark side" of the
"collective unconscious" that we share with all our fellow humans. Each of
us has the capacity, should we fail to keep our conscious minds sufficiently
energized, to slip into the kinds of "mass-minded" practices so well
elucidated by Carl Jung, in his insightful book, The Undiscovered Self, and
to begin projecting onto "scapegoats" those darker qualities we fear within
ourselves. While Hitler did not invent scapegoating, nor monopolize the
practice during the last century, he certainly demonstrated (a) how easily
the "dark side" could be mobilized into mass-thinking, and (b) the vicious
and dehumanizing consequences to which such practices could lead.
How does any of this relate to the immediate events of the "war on
terrorism?" If you have been paying close attention these past weeks, the
comparisons to the metastasizing of state power in Germany are quite
chilling.
For the benefit of those whose sense of history begins with the Beatles or
the Vietnam War, let me briefly inform you of how, in 1933, Hitler took
advantage of the burning of the Reichstag - an act that would have been
equivalent to the burning of the U.S. Capitol building - to impose upon the
German people the kinds of Draconian restrictions on individual liberty that
have since come to define a "police state." Police enjoyed the exercise of
unrestrained powers that were accompanied by expectations of unquestioning
obedience on the part of the German people. Intrusions into the home, the
beating and torturing of suspects, and the omnipresence of state authority
over virtually every detail of daily life, became the norm. The idea that
there was a realm of privacy that was immune from the whims of gestapo
agents was looked upon as utopian. People were expected to display their
"identity cards" upon demand by government officials, and it was implicitly
understood that there were no transcendent principles to which one could
have recourse against the most arbitrary of state brutalities.
Through it all, most of the German people maintained the illusion that they
were "free." (In this connection, one should read Milton Mayer's book, They
Thought They Were Free. Mayer lived with a number of ordinary Germans,
immediately after World War II, to find out their responses to having lived
under Hitler. The book's title tells you what he learned.) The phrase "work
shall make you free" that hung above the entrance to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, illustrates the depravity of a system that tried to
persuade its victims that obedience to the will of their rulers was the
essence of being "free!"
Does any of this begin to have a ring of familiarity to you as you listen to
government officials, the military leaders who now seem to be running the
country, and the media lickspittles (whose jobs, like those of the German
propagandists, was to translate the will of political leaders to the
public)? In the suppression of dissent, the suggestion that criticism of the
war be punished as treason, the public castigation of anyone who dares to
voice even a shadow of concern over some detail of President Bush's course
of action, and the FBI proposal that torture be available for use against
"suspects," one begins to get a feel for the ease with which otherwise civil
and decent men and women can become ardent supporters of the most inhumane
and oppressive practices.
It is not my purpose to impugn the motives or purposes of any of the people
who are involving themselves in any of these statist programs. I suspect
that most of the men and women who are pouring their energies into these
vicious and oppressive programs have truly convinced themselves that they
are doing "good" things for their country. I further suspect that their
inner sense of being would be offended by the suggestion that their efforts
are taking America in the same dehumanizing direction that Hitler took
Germany. But, then, I would also imagine that Hitler looked upon himself as
someone trying to do "good" things for his country.
The older I get, the more I realize that motives are less of a contributor
to the problems of the world than is the failure to understand what is
implicit in our actions. Anatole France observed that "those who have given
themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their
neighbours very miserable," an insight that should remind us of the
disruptive nature of unintended consequences.
At a time when the warmongers and power-brokers are busily whooping the
public into frenzied demands for military attacks against anyone who might
be made a plausible enemy, it is necessary that we heed the warnings of
Jung. We might begin by viewing some of Adolf Hitler's incendiary speeches
to realize how easily demagogues can mobilize our "dark side." In doing so,
we may become aware of how deeply involved our nation has been in projecting
onto others the disquieting characteristics and purposes of our own
behavior. The continual finger-pointing at the Hitlers, Stalins, Husseins,
and Khadafis, as people who want to "take over the world," has clouded our
view of the world-dominating ambitions of those who seek to impose their New
World Order. Nor can we fail to see the parallels between the kinds of
terror inflicted upon innocent victims by American bombers, and those
inflicted by those who hijack airliners and crash them into buildings. We
need to plumb the depths of our humanity, to call upon the life-force within
each of us, and withdraw our energies from the mass-mindedness that produces
such horrors.
Can we effect such a change in our thinking in time to save not only ours
and our children's' lives, but civilization itself? In the short-term there
is little reason for optimism, as we continue to see played out the
Orwellian processes through which tyranny is extruded from the twisting of
words into their opposite meanings. Nazi allusions to freedom in
concentration camps find their counterpart in the words of modern
politicians who tell us that both war and the increasing presence of police
in our lives will become "permanent"; measures that are an integral part of
a program packaged as "enduring freedom!"
Adolf Hitler dominated the 20th century. It looks as though he is staking
his claim to the 21st century as well.
October 31, 2001
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University
School of Law.
Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com
---------------------
"Rose Melinis" <rosemelinis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:N%Oif.188081$zb5.63404@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> The problem lies with the fact that the British had the means and
> opportunity to liquidate all of the people living in that area. Had they
> done so all of your twisted view of history would be moot. Possibly it can
> be done in the near future - a clean slate, so to speak, what say?
>
>
> <uneoo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:438ba996@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >
> > FWD-29-11-2005
> > [A good collection of reports on Iraq conflict can be found on
> > www.globalpolicy.org. Fair use policy applied. --U Ne Oo]
> >
> >
> > BRITAIN TRIED FIRST. IRAQ WAS NO PICNIC THEN.
> >
> > By John Kifner
> >
> > New York Times
> > July 20, 2003
> >
> >
> > The public, the distinguished military analyst wrote from Baghdad, had
> > been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with
> > dignity and honor."
> >
> >
> > "They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of
> > information," he said. "The Baghdad communique are belated, insincere,
> > incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our
> > administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."
> >
> >
> > He added: "We are today not far from a disaster." Sound familiar? That
> > was T. E. Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia writing in The Sunday Times of
> > London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British occupation of what was then
> > called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was Lieutenant Colonel
> > Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell who, more
> > than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to
> > become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too.
> >
> >
> > During the First World War, Lawrence had been present at the birth of
> > modern Arab nationalism and fought alongside its guerrillas to victory
> > against the Ottoman Empire, only to see the same guerrilla tactics
> > turned against the British in a rebellion in Iraq.
> >
> >
> > It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the
> > leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American
> > occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset.
> >
> >
> > It has not been going well, especially in Sunni-controlled central
> > Iraq. Rather than being hailed as liberators, the American troops face
> > "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" there that is increasingly
> > organized, their new regional commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said
> > last week. A Pentagon-approved independent body of experts criticized
> > the lack of postwar planning. Soldiers of the Army's Third Infantry
> > Division, have been told they are not going home as planned. The cost,
> > Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now says, is running about
> > $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice earlier estimates, and tens of
> > thousands of troops may have to remain for years to come.
> >
> >
> > At the same time, the rationale for war is increasingly
> > questioned. Terror weapons have not yet been found in Iraq, nor have
> > links to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration is scrambling to explain
> > how allegations based on forged documents purporting to show Iraqi
> > uranium purchases from Niger found their way into the State of the
> > Union address. All this has not helped build global support: last
> > week, India rejected an American request to send some 17,000
> > peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, clashes and increasingly sophisticated
> > ambushes have been running at a rate of a dozen a day; by week's end,
> > at least 33 American soldiers had been killed in hostilities since May
> > 1, the date when President Bush declared that major combat was over.
> >
> >
> > Ominously, Iraqi crowds have emerged to dance and cheer around
> > burned-out American Humvees. Many American officers had sensed trouble
> > ahead. As their armor clanked north to Baghdad, officers in the First
> > Marine Division said over and over that the war was no problem; the
> > difficulties would come with the rebuilding of Iraq. Indeed, in the
> > face of American might and technology, the enemy, for the most part,
> > simply did not show up for the big battles.
> >
> >
> > The British had a tougher time of it in World War I; they lost
> > thousands of troops most of them Indian in a five-month Turkish siege
> > of Kut. But they regrouped and captured Baghdad on March 11,
> > 1917. Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude greeted the populace with a speech that
> > could have been written today: "Our armies do not come into your
> > cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." Well,
> > not quite, General.
> >
> >
> > When World War I began in 1914, most Arab lands were under the
> > decaying Ottoman Empire, whose ruler, the caliph, was also Islam's
> > supreme authority. The Ottomans were Germany's allies, and Britain saw
> > a chance to seize the Middle East; its interests were to command the
> > trade routes to India and, as it would develop, to control the
> > emerging resource of oil. Lord Kitchener, the war minister, wanted to
> > set up his own caliph Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then.
> >
> >
> > Enter the Arab Bureau, a special intelligence unit set up in Cairo. It
> > had little expertise, and its early efforts to inspire an Arab revolt
> > failed. Then Lawrence, a young captain at the time, volunteered to
> > take a look on his vacation time. He recruited Hussein's second son,
> > Feisal, as the charismatic leader of what became known as the Great
> > Arab Revolt. His raiders crossed the desert to capture the port of
> > Aqaba from the rear, repeatedly blew up the Turks' railroad tracks and
> > harassed their troops, and finally entered Damascus in triumph
> > (although this had to be staged because the Australian cavalry got
> > there first).
> >
> >
> > The British had promised Feisal that he would be king of the Arabs in
> > Damascus and he arrived at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as the
> > chief Arab spokesman. But Britain and France had secretly agreed to
> > divide up the Middle East, and Feisal's reign in Damascus lasted just
> > months until the French came over the mountains from
> > Lebanon. Meanwhile, things were not going well for the British in
> > Mesopotamia. Bell was arbitrarily drawing lines on the map to make a
> > new country out of three former Ottoman provinces Mosul in the north,
> > Baghdad in the center and Basra in the south. The districts were
> > composed, respectively, of Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims,
> > all of whom hated each other and the British even more. For one thing,
> > the British were more efficient than the Turks in collecting taxes. By
> > 1920, the country was in full rebellion, from Shiite tribesmen in the
> > south to Kurds in the north. There were some 425 deaths on the British
> > side and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 among the Iraqis.
> >
> >
> > Hoping to restore order, the British, at the urging of Bell and
> > Lawrence, switched Feisal's franchise to Iraq in 1921, although he had
> > never set foot there. In a rigged plebiscite, the new king got 96 per
> > cent of the votes. King Feisal and his strongman prime minister, Nuri
> > as-Said, managed to solidify Sunni minority control over the rest of
> > the country. But there was frequent turmoil.
> >
> >
> > IN response, the British turned to technology, with their air force
> > commander, Arthur (Bomber) Harris, boasting that his biplanes had
> > taught Iraqis that "within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be
> > practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or
> > wounded." Winston Churchill, who, as colonial secretary, presided over
> > the creation of Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine, called Iraq an
> > "ungrateful volcano." Still, it took 35 years for the disaster that
> > Lawrence predicted to become total. Iraq gained independence in 1931,
> > but the British-sponsored monarchy hung on and guarded British
> > interests until 1958, when the royal family was murdered and dragged
> > through the streets. That ushered in a period of successive military
> > and Baath Party coups, all brutal, and by 1979 Saddam Hussein had
> > assumed total control.
> >
> >
> > Like the Arab Bureau, neoconservative policy makers in the Defense
> > Department, who have long been the most prominent advocates of
> > removing Mr. Hussein, have a vision of the Middle East and a
> > candidate. The vision is of a democratic Iraq that would be an example
> > of change to other, undemocratic, Arab nations the kind of change they
> > believe would remake the region and make easier an Arab-Israeli
> > peace. They have promoted as a leader Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite
> > from a wealthy family that had been close to the old monarchy, even
> > though some Middle East specialists in the State Department distrust
> > him and consider him ineffectual. As the head of the Iraqi National
> > Council, Mr. Chalabi recently returned to Iraq after living in exile
> > for decades. The American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III,
> > has appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, with Mr. Chalabi
> > among them.
> >
> >
> > One other thing about Colonel Lawrence. While some of his exploits are
> > doubtless exaggerated, his guerrilla tactics are still much
> > studied. He came to realize that when a small band faced more powerful
> > conventional forces, its strength lay in avoiding direct battles and
> > instead conducting stealthy raids. His own guerrilla force, he wrote
> > in his memoir, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," had "a sophisticated alien
> > enemy, disposed as an army of occupation in an area greater than could
> > be dominated effectively from fortified posts. It had a friendly
> > population, in which some 2 in the 100 were active, and the rest
> > quietly sympathetic to the point of not betraying the movements of the
> > minority."
> >
> >
> > That larger army could be demoralized and worn down, its patrols and
> > sentries made nervous and drawn, waiting for the next attack and never
> > sure from where it would come. It is a feeling the weary soldiers of
> > the Third Infantry Division are coming to know well.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
.
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