THE WAR AFTER THAT | 2001-11-20
Respectable conservatives love to call people "Nazis" but they are the ones who want a militarized America. When they talk about war, you can almost see them drool. They just love the idea of Americans getting killed.
One conservative commentator after another licks his lips and talks about going after Iraq next.
The theory is that if Saddam Hussein stays in power he will get atomic weapons and other means for Superterrorism. Plenty of people have plenty of opinions on this and I can't add much to what you already know.
What concerns me is the whole idea of an endless war against terror.
Republicans love to call people naziswhowantotkillsixmillionjews, but they keep adopting Hitlerian terminology. Hitler talked about his New Order and Bush Senior talked about his New World Order. Hitler talked about a Thousand Year Reich and now Bush Junior is talking about an unending war against terror.
Huey Long, who knew all about demagoguery, once pointed out that, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-Fascism." The best excuse for terror is to say that you are preventing terror.
There is nothing new about this insight. Anybody who knows political history is aware of how one horror is always justified in the name of preventing another horror. When Communists justify their police state, they say they are "stopping the fascists." When fascists round up people it is always in the name of fighting Communism.
After beating Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans would be flushed with victory and looking for the next war.
That war is likely to be against the Palestinians. After two major victories, no one could stop conservative bloodlust and the Israeli lobby from going overboard. It would be like trying to stop a train with your bare hands. A war bandwagon like that would be a sure formula for disaster. Let me repeat here what might happen (originally published September 12, 2001)
WHAT MAY HAPPEN
September 12, 2001
1) Because of the attack on America, the United States has a chance to really move into the Middle East on the side of Israel.
2) We now have the combination of the Israeli lobby and a state of war.
3) With support from everybody, the US goes into the Middle East big time.
4) The US, pushed by the Israeli lobby, fundamentalist "Christians" and Israel-hawk liberals, goes absolutely nuts in the Middle East.
5) As in Vietnam, our "allies" desert us sometime next year.
6) The US goes it alone, getting in deeper and deeper.
7) As the ruin mounts up from loss of oil and -- less important, the deaths of Americans -- an anti-Semitic reaction grows.
8) In the 1960s, the media and antiwar advocates became more and more openly pro-Communist. As our economic collapse grows and real anti-Semitism grows in the US, swastikas begin to go on the streets.
9) People like me begin to scream "naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews," because by now it's a real threat. But leftists have screamed that "wolf" too often in the past.
10) a new Holocaust begins.
And don't buy the lie that a multiracial country cannot be violently anti-Semitic. Multicultural countries cannot unite on what they are FOR, but it is easy for different groups to join in a common HATE. September 11 should convince us of that.