[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, Hitler is everyone's favorite demon these days. There is some validity in comparing the program set forth in Mein Kampf with the PNAC papers, but the additional baggage of Hitler's outright depravity makes people not already convinced that Bush is evil unwilling to consider the comparison. It would be better to compare him to saner, if equally ruthless and efficient, conquerors and manipulators. Bismark, who built up 19th century Germany from the base of Prussia example -- or Frederick II ('the Great') who built up Prussia as a military power a century earlier -- if we are sticking to Germans. But of course the Germans have no monopoly on this sort of personality. They were just conveniently close enemies over the Last few centuries and so are remembered more readily. The two French examples that come immediately to mind were more opportunists than 'methodical plotters' -- Napoleon and his relative Napoleon III. But then there is the 'Sun King' Louis IV who wanted all the royal houses of Europe united under his throne. Going back a bit further in history provides lots of European rulers of the same stripe as the corporate Robber Barons that currently form the ruling US oligarchy.

We've had more than a few US Presidents of the same sort as GWB, you know. The people who reach that office are almost always the servants of the Robber Barons if not members of that class themselves, as GWB is. We have been regularly invading various nations in Central American all through the previous century, usually to protect business interests. McKinley found a convenient excuse for the Spanish War in 1898 through the 'fortunate accident' of the Maine. Remember the Maine? Spain was a decrepit remnant of an empire and easily defeated, of course. We got our first over-seas colonies out of that war, Cuba and the Phillipines. Somehow or other Cuba slipped away. I don't recall how that occured. And Hawaii was annexed around the same time though I forget the exact date. The native government had been over-thrown by corporate invaders who wanted their fruit plantations to be under US jurisdiction. A few years later Teddy Roosevelt conveniently had a fleet standing by to support Panama's declaration of independence from Colombia so he could build that canal. A somewhat 'grander' motive than protecting fruit plantations or rubber plantations or strip mines, I guess, but still no more legitimate than Britain would have been in supporting the South during the Civil War to ensure cotton supplies for their industries.

So Bush wielding US military power to extend corporate power is actually not at all unusual as US Presidents go. We've just grown used to the Cold War posture of 'defending the free world' and forgotten what the US government has historially been most concerned with -- siezing territory and resources to insure profits.

[ April 17, 2003, 20:23: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]