Boston Globe editorial lectures Rumsfeld for misusing the word “fascist”, while at the same time criticizing those who use the term to describe the Bush regime.
Donald
Rumsfeld’s American Legion speech last week continues to be a lightening
rod for outrage and controversy. Millions of people are furious that Rumsfeld
would have the audacity to say that those who oppose the Bush regime’s unjust
wars are appeasing fascists.
Keith Olbermann delivered a broadside against Rumsfeld on
his MSNBC show last week. Later in the week some U.S. Senators announced that they
may introduce a “non-binding resolution” (meaning, don’t expect anything
to actually come of it) demanding Rumsfeld’s resignation.
And on August 30, the Boston
Globe came out with an editorial
lecturing Rumsfeld for misusing the word “fascist” and not
understanding history. The editorial
then went on to criticize the recent ad published in the New York Times by The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime which
correctly identified the direction the Bush regime is taking society “fascist”. The Globe editorial concluded that “there
is plenty of fodder for a sharp critique of the Bush administration without
opponents resorting to hyperbole about Hitler”.
Here’s something the editorialists of the Globe either reject or don’t understand
about history. Nazism didn’t go from Hitler coming to power to death camps and
invasions that ended with 20 million dead overnight. There was a process, and a
logic to that process, that ended in calamity and ruin being spread across a
continent, with a “homeland” in a repressive clampdown that tolerated
no dissent or opposition. And here’s another thing – fascism won’t come to this
country by people speaking German, sporting funny moustaches, and waving
swastikas. It will come with people who drape themselves in the American flag
and demand absolute unquestioning obedience to their every act – no matter how
criminal.
People need to look long and hard at the process and logic
to the process that the Bush Regime has embarked on.
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It has orchestrated the invasion of two countries by the
most massive military machine the world has ever known – on the basis of
evidence the whole world knows is false. The people responsible for this
continue to say “trust us” as they threaten not only to invade a
third – Iran
– but to use everything in their arsenal, up to and including nuclear weapons,
against it.
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People held captive by this military machine are being
tortured as a matter of government policy.
Long standing and universally recognized standards outlawing torture are
rejected out of hand by Bush and Rumsfeld, and their attorneys make the
argument – these laws don’t apply to us, because, because, “we’re the good
guys”.
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People rounded up by this war machine, including boys in
their early teens, people who demonstrably have no connection with any of the
forces the Bush Regime claims are “terrorist”, and elderly men, are
held without charges, without knowing what they’re accused of, without the
right to a hearing or a lawyer, without any legal recourse whatsoever. And they
are held indefinitely. As soon as a court ruling is made which questions the
legitimacy of this practice, the attorneys of the war machine are at work
redrafting the rules, so that the practice can continue. Meanwhile, of course,
none of the people illegitimately held have been released since these court
rulings.
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The Bush Regime prepared and rammed through Congress
legislation – the Patriot Act – which enables it to subject political
organizations to wiretapping, surveillance, and investigation for criminal
activity. It allows the FBI to investigate citizens for criminal matters
without probable cause if it is for what they say are “intelligence
purposes”. As an American Civil Liberties Union fact sheet points, out,
the Patriot Act directly threatens or undermines the First, Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
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The Bush Regime did nothing to help while tens of thousands
of people – most of the poor, most of them Black – needlessly suffered and died
in New Orleans
last year, while the whole world watched. In the midst of the suffering, Bush
told Michael Brown that he was doing a “heck of a job”.
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Rumsfeld, along with Bush, Cheney, and the rest threaten all
who oppose them, from years ago telling people to watch what they say and do,
up to last week, when Rumsfeld came within about an inch of calling all the
people – the millions of people in this country – against what they are doing
and the even greater crimes they are threatening, of being traitors.
Rumsfeld ought to be more careful about throwing around the
word fascist. Maybe more people will start learning what it means, and seeing
how it applies to them. By any recognized standard of international law, Bush,
Rumsfeld, and the rest of the crew at the helm of the ship of state these days
would have been recognized as war criminals long ago. By any decent standard of
morality, their depraved and murderous behavior must be rejected.
As Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter said, “The Bush
Administration is the most dangerous force that has ever existed. It is more
dangerous than Nazi Germany because of the range and depth of its activities
and intentions worldwide. I give my full support to the Call to Drive out the
Bush Regime.” Pinter’s statement is fact, not hyperbole.
Knowing all this – which only touches on the enormous damage
the Bush Regime is wreaking on the entire planet and its people – and not
acting on that knowledge in a way that really has meaning, that is not
symbolic, but is intended to be part of a great political movement that can
change the direction of society, is ultimately, to be complicit in it.
It doesn’t have to be this way. As the Clash once sang –
“the future is unwritten”.
What if millions in Germany from all walks of life, had
developed the means and ways to oppose the Nazi tyranny from its onset, to
change the political climate and direction of that country. What if millions of
people, instead of looking the other way and being glad it wasn’t them when
“first they came for the communists ” then they came for the came for the
Jews ” then they came for the Catholics “” had risen up in tens of thousands
and even millions to say NO!
What if millions of people in this country today, who are
appalled by and angered at the whole direction Bush & Co. are taking the
world were to politically act together to oppose this and to create a new
political atmosphere, determined to bring all this to a halt. This is possible,
and the world urgently demands that it be done – in a big way on October 5, and
continuing until the Bush Regime is driven out.
As the World Can’t Wait call to October 5 says, Imagine if, from out of
this huge reservoir of people, a great wave were unleashed, moving together on
the same occasion, making, through their firm stand and their massive numbers,
a powerful political statement that could not be ignored: refusing that day to
work, or walking out from work, taking off from school or walking out of school
— joining together, rallying and marching, drawing forward many more with
them, and in many and varied forms of creative and meaningful political protest
throughout the day, letting it be known that they are determined to bring this
whole disastrous course to a halt by driving out the Bush Regime through the
mobilization of massive political opposition.
If that were done, then the possibility of turning things around and onto
a much more favorable direction would take on a whole new dimension of reality.