Bush Redux: As Jeb Bush prepares to run in 2016, remember his brother. Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities by WAYNE MADSEN

Bush Redux: As Jeb Bush prepares to run in 2016, remember his brother

As Jeb Bush prepares to run for president in 2016, WMR is posting this article about his brother, Bush 43, as a reminder of nightmares past . . .

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Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities

by WAYNE MADSEN

Adolf Hitler would be proud that an American President is emulating him in so many ways. Hitler, it will be remembered, routinely ignored his military, other world leaders, and the clergy. Bush seems to think that this policy, which ultimately failed for Hitler, will work for him.

First, we should consider what Christian leaders are saying about Bush.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, Frank T. Griswold III, says “I’d like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States” and blasts George W. Bush for his saber rattling. Apparently, poppy Bush, an Episcopalian, believes that the head of his church is wrong and his wayward son is right.

From the Vatican, Pope John Paul II fires a shot over the bow of the Bush administration by declaring, “war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions.”

In a television ad, the chief ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Church, Bishop Melvin Talbert, says that his fellow Methodist’s rush to war “violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

The Anglican House of Bishops has warned, “without compelling new evidence to confirm that Iraq was stockpiling chemical or biological weapons, war could not be morally justified.”

Bush, who, during one of the presidential debates, said his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, has apparently decided to ignore his teachings.

Maybe Bush has decided to turn away from Jesus Christ and instead seek Providence from a tequila bottle, as his State of the Union address with numerous examples of slurred speech would seem to indicate.

Bush, a so-called compassionate conservative and born-again Christian, can only find religious support from the same group of hackneyed pseudo-Christians, hate mongers, and religious cult leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Sun Myung Moon. Bush opts for this band of zealots and ignores South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who asked, “When does compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?” His words fall on deaf ears in the Oval Office.

Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to play with dynamite by ignoring some of America’s top military minds.

One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military commander of Desert Storm. He told The Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf’s comments mirror those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps Commandant and now NATO commander General James Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another recipient of Rumsfeld’s wrath is the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who Rumsfeld accused of having a “case of the slows” in carrying out Bush’s war plans.

Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into open wounds when he ordered his “CINCs” (Commander-in-Chief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one “commander-in-chief” and that is Bush. Neither did it help when Rumsfeld said military draftees never added any value to the service.

Pentagon sources report that some officers are digging out old message traffic that emanated from the Nixon White House in 1974 during the height of the Watergate crisis. One particular order from then Chief of Staff Al Haig stated that military commanders were to ignore any orders from Nixon unless they were authorized and co-signed by Haig. The fear then was that Nixon might have ordered a military move on the Congress during the impeachment hearings and cite national security as the reason for suspending the congressional proceedings against him.

In the end, however, Nixon understood the gravity of his constitutional responsibilities. He resigned. Bush, on the other hand, has done more to shred the Constitution than any of his predecessors.

Of course, there was once another fanatic war-possessed leader who tore up his constitution and routinely berated his generals and ignored their advice. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg strode into a conference room in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair compound with a briefcase bomb. Although the plot to rid the world of Hitler once and for all failed, it confirmed that a number of Germany’s top generals, including its most famous, Erwin von Rommel, were strongly opposed to Hitler’s fanaticism.

War making and saber rattling is not the only similarity of Bush to Hitler. The German leader, along with Joseph Goebbels, was also a master of propaganda. The Bush administration, obviously putting its propaganda arm, the White house Office of Global Communications, into full gear, convinced nine European leaders to take out an ad, billed as an ‘article,” in several European newspapers supporting the Bush administration. Some of the usual suspects signed on to the article, including Tony Blair, who, in addition to Barney and Spot, is Bush’s favorite lap dog. But it is interesting to point out some of the other leaders who backed Bush. They include the Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary and President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. These countries, which joined NATO a few years ago with the provision that they buy billions of dollars of American warplanes, tanks, and other hardware, are virtual subsidiaries of America’s military-industrial complex.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is only in power because of the support he receives from a rabidly anti-immigrant party that mirrors John Ashcroft’s brand of conservatism. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi heads a party that has maintained strong links to Italy’s neo-fascist movement whose founding father was Benito Mussolini. Likewise, the parties of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Portugal’s Jose Barroso have historical links to the fascist movements of Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar, respectively.

Bush’s borrowing liberally from Hitler’s play book was not lost on Germany’s former Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who last September said Bush wanted a war with Iraq to divert attention from domestic problems. She added, “That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that.”

Bush, who is content to win the support of Pentagon stooges in Eastern Europe and neo-fascists elsewhere, has chosen to ignore people like former South African President Nelson Mandela who made no secret of his disgust for Bush when he declared at a women’s forum, “One power with a president who has no foresight — who cannot think properly — is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who did more to bring peace to the world in a couple of years than either of the Bush’s have done in two presidential terms, said last year that George W. Bush is a threat to world peace and that his plans to attack Iraq will destroy the international coalition in the war on terrorism. Former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate warned that a pre-emptive US attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences.

Bush’s disparaging of the United Nations, world opinion, and international statesmen is reminiscent of an April 28, 1939 speech by Hitler before the Reichstag:

“Members of the German Reichstag: The President of the United States of America has addressed a telegram to me, with the curious contents of which you are already familiar . . . The President of the United States believes that in conference rooms as in courts it is necessary that both sides enter in good faith, assuming that substantial justice will accrue to both. German representatives will never again enter a conference that is for them a tribunal . . . Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not invade, the territory or possessions of the following independent nations. He then names as those to which he refers: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia,’ Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain , Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran. I have first taken the trouble to ascertain from the states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and, what is most important, secondly, whether this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us at their suggestion or at least with their consent. The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so . . . I have reunited the territories that have been German throughout a thousand years of history-and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to attain all this without bloodshed and without bringing to my people and so to others, the misery of war . . . For my world, Mr. President, is the one to which Providence has assigned me and for which it is my duty to work. Its area is much smaller. It comprises my people alone. But I believe I can thus best serve that which is in the hearts of all of us a justice, well-being, progress and peace for the whole community of mankind.”

As Congress cheerfully applauded Bush’s State of the Union address, the Reichstag gave Hitler a thunderous reception. Although Hitler’s oratory skills were light years beyond Bush’s, the two speeches had something extremely fundamental in common – they were packed with lies.

Al-Qaeda's Christian mirror

THE ROVING EYE
Al-Qaeda's Christian mirrorBy Pepe Escobar

Imagine if Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old pale, blond, blue-eyed, 100% Norwegian, gun-crazy ultra right-wing Christian fundamentalist responsible for the car bombing in Oslo and the meticulous targeted assassinations at the island of Utoya that killed 93 people, was a Muslim immigrant.

One does not even have to imagine it - as the concentric Western circles of the Islamophobia industry immediately attributed the massacre in Norway to "al-Qaeda", until facts got in the way.

Wait a minute. "Targeted assassinations?" It had to cross the killer's mind that if the Barack Obama administration could do it - in AfPak, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, all in the name of Western civilization - there's nothing to prevent a cool Scandinavian from exercising the same rights on his own soil.

The overlapping strands of al-Qaeda ideology can be examined in detail in volumes such as Al-Qaeda in Its Own Words, edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, and published in English by Harvard University Press. Lone Breivik also concocted his own hefty, 1,500-page hate manifesto [1], titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, where he equally thrashes liberalism, multiculturalism and "cultural Marxism", which are allegedly destroying European Christian civilization.

As much as al-Qaeda - under the ideological guidance of now leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri - embarked on defensive (and occasionally offensive) jihad against Christians and Jews, Breivik calls for no less than a Christian jihad to defend Europe from yet another Muslim invasion.

The return of the Christian crusaders
What reveals that Breivik is no lone freak is that the ideology behind the manifesto overwhelmingly condemns not only Islam per se, Muslim immigration in Europe, and multiculturalism, but also all the neo-Nazi, racial supremacist rants against these "evils".

Breivik, the mass bomber who loves crappy Eurovision songs and the US cop show The Shield, and owns legitimate licenses for a Glock pistol, an automatic rifle and a shotgun is a typical convert of the new, slightly more sophisticated pan-European ultra-right narrative - according to which the battle for the soul of Europe will be fought on cultural grounds.

After a brief visit to Denmark and southern Sweden in the autumn of 2010, I had already touched on these broader themes in Letter from Islamophobistan (Asia Times Online, October 22, 2010).

Breivik goes one step ahead by weaponizing the new thinking - according to which it's not a question of Muslims being biologically inferior to the Christian West; the problem is the tenets of Islam are absolutely incompatible with the West.

It's all about culture. "They" don't share "our values" and our way of life. As a shrewd public relations move, this culturalist explanation is bound to attract even moderate Europeans.

Breivik and his ilk blame Western parliamentary democracy as a whole - political correctness included - for allowing Muslims in Europe to establish themselves as Trojan horses. Everything and everyone is a threat - from al-Qaeda to the bureaucratic European Union (EU) and the multicultural United Nations (UN). Breivik and his kind are Huntingtonesque all the way - fearing a clash of civilizations right at home.

No wonder the next logical step was for Breivik to become a modern-day version of the Knights Templars extolled in his rambling manifesto - and thus set an example. The Knights' agenda; to "seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda".

"Al-Qaeda" - or the nebula of franchises and copycats commonly bundled as "al-Qaeda" - does not have the resources to attack Europe, and this is not the priority anyway; the priority is AfPak, Central Asia and India, as detailed by al-Qaeda's military commander Ilyas Kashmiri. But the priority of Christian fundamentalist terror is definitely Europe. And the attacks will come via loners such as Breivik as well as organized groups.

Western progressives must be on red alert. Taboos will have to be smashed - especially by identifying the contorted but most of the time crude strategies employed by ultra-right Christian fundamentalism and Zionists to foment Islamophobia in the West.
For instance, both Islamophobes and hardcore Zionists see the Israeli subjugation of Palestine as Israel defending itself in a clash of civilizations. Model disciple Breivik hails notorious American Islamophobes such as Pam Geller and Daniel Pipes as much as he abhors Norwegian support for an independent, sovereign Palestinian state.

Breivik wrote, "It's very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists different from each other. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies. Not all Muslims, Nazis and Marxists are conservative; most of them are moderate. But does it matter?"

It doesn't; fascism is an equal-opportunity seducer. There will be blood - a lot more blood, as Europe confronts its own heart of darkness. Beware the return - en masse - of the pale blue-eyed Christian crusader.

Note
1. See key extracts here

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

LATE EDITION. Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry has few takers of Guinness and chicken wings

Anti-abortion leader Randall Terry, the head of Operation Rescue, held a press conference today at the National Press Club in Washington, DC that featured chicken wings and cans of Guinness. However, of the few journalists who showed up to cover the event. Only one local right-wing gadfly journalist partook of the "wings and beer" communion offering.

Terry spoke about the recent killing of women's reproductive health physician Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas by right-wing activist Scott Roeder. Terry, who likened the anti-abortion movement to the anti-slavery movement, said Tiller "reaped what he sowed." Terry also said that the "social warfare" being practiced by the "pro-life" movement exemplified Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831 that saw a slave rebellion in which some 60 slaves kill 55 whites, including slave owners and their families.

Terry said that opposition to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wadedecision that legalized abortion and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court was prompting a new activism by anti-abortion activists. Terry said that there are plans for a new program to train anti-abortion activists called "Insurrecta nex."

Part of Terry's new activism will be to convince Catholic archbishops and bishops to refuse communion to any Catholic Republican or "Democrat" senator who votes to confirm Sotomayor. Specifically mentioned as targets were Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.as well as Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Sam Brownback of Kansas. Terry noted that some of the Democratic senators are from archdioceses and dioceses whose archbishops and bishops spoke out against Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to speak at the university's commencement ceremony last month. Terry was arrested during an anti-Obama demonstration on the Notre Dame campus prior to Obama's visit.

Terry put Archbishops Wuerle of the District of Columbia and Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore and Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Virginia on notice that they would be be pressured to tell senators who live in their jurisdictions that communion to them would be refused if they vote to confirm Sotomayor.

Terry did say that he would have canceled today's press conference, which occurred the day after an extreme right-winger shot and killed a security guard at the Holocaust museum, but that his event had been scheduled a week prior to the violent incident that took place yesterday just down 14th Street from the National Press Club.

Terry personally offered this editor Guinness and wings, which are among my favorite combinations, but I politely declined the offer.

Randall Terry speaks to sparse audience at National Press Club

"We're Dealing with a Christian Taliban"

Interview with Mikey Weinstein

09/07/07 - --- WASHINGTON, Sep 7 (IPS) - Last month, the Pentagon pulled the plug on a plan to dispatch so-called "freedom packages" to U.S. troops in Iraq that included Bibles, proselytising materials in English and Arabic, and an apocalyptic computer game in which "soldiers for Christ" battle satanic "Global Community Peacekeepers".

The scheme was derailed in part because of the efforts of Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which seeks to protect the wall separating church and state in the United States armed forces.

Weinstein, in his own words, is no "bleeding-heart liberal". He is a 1977 honor graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, and spent 10 years in the Air Force as a "JAG" or military attorney serving as both a federal prosecutor and criminal defence attorney.

A registered Republican, he also spent over three years in the Ronald Reagan administration as legal counsel in the White House, where he helped investigate the Iran-Contra scandal.

St. Martins Press in New York recently released Weinstein's new book, "With God On Our Side," an expose on the systemic problem of religious intolerance throughout the United States armed forces.

Eli Clifton recently spoke with Weinstein about Operation Straight Up, which designed the "freedom packages", and the Pentagon's growing coziness with fundamentalist evangelical religious groups.

IPS: What is it about the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs that has made it a breeding ground for Christian Dominionists?

MW: Well, first we thought it was that there was this nexus of what I refer to as the "Protestant Vatican" -- in fact many people refer to it as that. Colorado Springs has over 100 of this nation's largest evangelical fundamentalist Christian organisations centred right there for some reason. Just like a moth to a flame these organisations have been attracted there. That was our initial theory before we found out that this imperious contagion of constitutional triumphalism, this fanatical Dominionist Christianity had swept like a tsunami all the way through all 737 US military installations that the Pentagon admits that we have -- but it's really closer to a thousand -- in 132 countries around the world. Seventy of those are in Europe of and 11 of those house nuclear weapons.

Let me make this clear. I'm doing this Q&A with you guys today as a man at war with the gun smoke in my face. We are not at war with Christianity or evangelical Christianity. We have many evangelical or non-evangelical Christians who massively support what our organisation, the Military Religious Freedom Centre, is doing. We are at war with a small subset of evangelical Christianity [known as] "Dominionist Christianity" and it represents about 12.6 percent of the American public or about 38 million people.

And at every one of those 737 US military installations that are scattered in 132 countries around the world -- as we garrison the globe -- we have one or more of those organisations. They're called the "Officers Christian Fellowship" for the officers and "The Christian Military Fellowship" for the enlisted folks and these organisations have a tripartite, or three level goal, which they view as much more important than the oath that they all swear to protect and preserve, support and defend the constitution of the United States.

The first goal -- and they're unabashed about it, it's right on their website -- is they want to see a "spiritually transformed U.S. military..."

Second, "...with ambassadors for Christ in uniform..." which, parenthetically, hasn't worked out too well for the world for the past 2,000 years.

And then thirdly, "...empowered by the Holy Spirit."

IPS: Could you talk a bit about Operation Straight Up and the Christian Ministry? How do they gain access to soldiers in Iraq or film promotional videos in the halls of the Pentagon?

MW: Well we hope to have the full answers to these questions shortly as we are nearing the filing of our massive lawsuit against the Pentagon for these very reasons.

The Christian Embassy was a little known, under the radar, extreme right-wing fundamentalist organisation that was operating in Washington DC and ministering, if you will, only to the glitterati and cognoscenti -- that is to say the senior people at the State Department, members of Congress, and political appointees, specifically in the Pentagon.

If you go MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org you'll see their slick, 11-minute video. It opens up with the Christian Embassy stating that there are 25,000 men and women in the corridors and rings of the Pentagon and through the use of daily prayer breakfast and bible studies and outreach events the Christian Embassy is "mustering all of them into an intentional relationship with Jesus Christ." It's really astonishing to see. To see senior members of the U.S. military and political appointees prostituting themselves with regard to the oath they took to the constitution and supporting the biblical worldview of just this one particular group.

IPS: What steps has the Defence Department taken to limit proselytising within the ranks? Where has the DoD fallen short?

MW: They are encouraging this. They aren't stopping it. The report that the DoD IG (Inspector General) came out with was ludicrous. It immediately exempted itself from something called DoD directive 1300.17 which is entitled "Accommodation of Religious Practices within the Military Services". They say that anyone who appeared in that video was not really trying to proselytise or express their religious views. They say that the directive is just dictating when you may or may not wear your uniform.

This is a complete lie. If you look at that video again you'll see that if the people at the Pentagon had been doing a video like that for the Ford Mustang there'd be no doubt in your mind that these people were pushing Ford Mustangs as the best cars around. So the IG report is terrible. It doesn't provide any remedial action.

Let me make it clear. We are dealing with a Christian Taliban. They hate when I say that but that's too bad. If you look at Chris Hedges Book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" you'll see that the Christian Right is a fascistic organisation. And remember, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal -- not that there's anything wrong with that. I know the Christian Right would love it if I were a tree-hugging, Chardonnay-sipping, Northern California Democrat. I'm not. I come from a conservative military family. My youngest son just graduated three months ago from the Air Force Academy. He's the sixth member of my family to go there including myself. We have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 128 years of combined active duty military service in my immediate family. I spent three and half years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House as one of his lawyers. I've been Ross Perot's general counsel. I didn't want to have to get into this fight. But when I say the Christian Taliban I frickin mean the Christian Taliban.

IPS: What consequences do whistleblowers within the armed forces face?

MW: They're terrified. Look, in many aspects the military controls their lives. We are closing in on having our 6,000th active member of the U.S. military contact us not as claimants but as tormentees. And the amazing thing is that it stays remarkably constant that roughly 96 percent of these tormentees coming to us are Christian themselves.

Roughly three-fourths of that group are going to be traditional Protestant -- that is to say Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians. We even get Assemblies of God, Church of Christ, Baptists and sometimes Southern Baptists. The other one-fourth of that 96 percent are generally Roman Catholic. And that leaves four percent who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto, Jain, Wickan and atheists and agnostics.

Basically what we're facing are Fundamentalist, Dominionist Christians that are preying --- P-R-A-Y and P-R-E-Y -- on non-Fundamentalist Christians including in many respects other evangelical Christians that are just not fundamentalist Christians, telling them that, "you may think you were Christian enough for us but you're not. And as a result, you will burn eternally in the fires of Hell along with the Jews."

And that's why I've got to be here to take the calls around the clock from our troops. Many times they will not give me their name, sometimes they will. Often times they will give me the contact information for their supervisors or their commanders and what unit they're in. Then my job is I go call these people and make it clear that this is happening and suggest they make it stop or make them the next star on CNN.



"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano