Post #18

Osama Bin Hitler?

I’m sure that anybody who is reading this blog has heard of the “Nazi” speech, the address at the 88th annual American Legion National Convention delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Salt Lake City, Utah, Tuesday, August 29, 2006. I want to give my impressions.

First, it is well-written.
- There are bullets – strategic pauses, l-o-n-g involved phrases followed by short phrases and other rhetorical devices that make this speech an easy listen and an easy read.
- There are personal notes. On a personal note, I’ve read Gerry Spence’s How to Argue and Win Every Time – or something like that :p – and understand the powerful effect of personal notes.

Second, some of the thinking is just,… well,… wrong. The concerns about the actual Nazi link are overblown. I’ve eliminated the “red meat” – those parts designed to get applause; surprisingly, most of the speech is “red meat” – and gotten to the points. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….


* * *

It's a privilege to work with a president who is determined to protect our flag. … We are fortunate to have a leader of strong resolve at a time of war.

[Uh, when did Congress declare war? Ya know, George W. Bush, the Constitution, that document you’re supposed to protect and defend – when did Congress follow that document? When did ya ask? I thought, after 9/11, ya said that, if we change the way we live, the terrorists win. Now, we are at war. What happened?]

Through all the challenges, he remains the same man who stood atop the rubble in Manhattan with a bullhorn vowing to fight back. The leader who told a grieving nation that we will never forget what was lost. And the President who has worked every day to fulfill his vow to protect the American people and to bring the enemy to justice or to bring justice to the enemy.

[Good Lord. Pay attention to this blog sometime, Don Rumsfeld, and see your “Great Leader” in action.]

That year -- 1919 -- turned out to be one of the pivotal junctures in modern history with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the creation of the League of Nations, a treaty and an organization intended to make future wars unnecessary and obsolete. Indeed, 1919 was the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate public discourse and thinking in the West.

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then-recent memory of World War I could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:

“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!"

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today -- another enemy, a different kind of enemy -- has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history's lessons.

[Aaahhh – I’ve included that section to show the folly of reading too much into history’s lessons. It was not a “strange innocence” – it was a reading of history: The Great War, WWI, occurred because of NOT talking.

More later….]