By RJ Schinner, 9/5/06
Has anyone noticed the many recent contorted historical
analogies made by Bush administration officials? Clearly these are attempts confuse people
about the reality of what this regime is doing and exactly what side of history
they stand on. Last week Rumsfeld had
the nerve to compare those who oppose the Bush regime’s unjust wars to
“appeasers of fascism” in the 1930’s.
This week, Condoleezza Rice takes the cake for the most outrageously twisted
historical analogy.
In an interview in Essence magazine, Rice had the audacity
to liken those calling for an end to the bloody occupation of Iraq to
Northerners who thought they should end the Civil War before defeating the
Confederacy and abolishing slavery. She
said “I’m sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the
Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold.
I know there were people who said, ‘Why don’t we get out of this now, take a
peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'” Sorry Condi, but occupying Iraq, bombing
whole cities, massacring innocent civilians, and torturing detainees does not
compare to freeing slaves.
In the same interview, Rice said “I resented the notion that the
President of the United States,
this President of the United
States, would somehow decide to let people
suffer because they were black. I found that to be the most corrosive and
outrageous claim that anybody could have made, and it was wholly and totally
irresponsible.” So why then were Black
neighborhoods left in the worst position to deal with a hurricane, not provided
with immediate rescue and aid, even turned back by from attempts at escaping the
flood, crammed into sports arenas in a way eerily similar to slave ships,
decried by government officials as “dangerous looters”, and even had
National Guardsmen sent in with orders to “shoot to kill” them?