Erdogan is Hitler
The foreign policy of the bi-factional ruling party is really quite remarkable. While the red faction, led by George Bush and his Neoconian Guard, has been aggressively making the case that it is the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is the Hitler du jour, the blue faction, which currently endures what passes for the leadership of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, argues that it should be Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead. We still await the final word on the matter, which is expected to announced by the ruling party's queen-in-waiting, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Kim Jong-il, who was Hitler for one brief shining moment 2004, remains a dark horse, as does Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, Richard Dawkins and anyone else that Michael Medved, Abe Foxman or Ira Forman might happen to consider insufficiently respectful of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
There's one ruling party, factions red and blue,
They've got so many Hitlers they don't know what to do.
They gave them some press,
Invaded a few,
Whipped them with words and then bid them adieu.
The problem is that this amusing little game of Whack-a-Hitler manages to combine the worst aspects of strategic schizophrenia and national insecurity with the continued justification for the federal government's many attacks on the rights and liberties of Americans. The latest diplomatic blunder has long-time American ally Turkey threatening to attack recent, but very enthusiastic, American ally Kurdistan-to-be, with the very real possibility of American troops being caught in the middle. This was eminently predictable — many commentators, including me, predicted it — but the administration was too caught up in its "strategery" fantasies of purple-fingered Iraqis voting for secular self-government to concern itself with worrying about the obvious.
When one reads histories that deal with the slow development of the first and second World Wars, one is always astounded to discover the banal reasons underlying significant historical developments. It would seem utterly impossible that any American government could be foolish enough to launch a third war, while running a serious risk of sparking off a fourth that would leave its forces surrounded on three sides by enemies, and yet the absurd and the impossible appear to be growing ever more likely. The scenario can't help but strike one as the same sort of inept military strategy that led a certain German Reichskanzler to open up an Eastern Front while still facing a serious enemy to the west; metaphorically speaking, one should not rule out George W. Bush as a candidate for "Hitler of the Month" in his own right.
The ruling party's warmongers (version 3.0) seem to forget that even when Hitler was the "Hitler of the Month," the mere fact of his genuine Hitlerhood was not enough to inspire Americans to support a war against Germany. World War II raged for more than two years before Congress could be persuaded to issue a declaration of war against Germany, and this was only the response to Pearl Harbor combined with a German declaration of war against the United States. Now, the post-democratic USA no longer bothers with petty details such as declarations of war or considerations of public support; there's no need for a draft, or even enlistments, when you can simply hire Blackwater and promise U.S. citizenship to Mexican nationals willing to put in a term as a mercenary.
Americans face an important choice in 2008. It is not between the red faction and the blue faction, as with one notable exception, their representatives will continue precisely the same policies of foreign belligerence, open borders and strategic incoherency that we have hitherto enjoyed courtesy of the previous Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations. The choice is between a sovereign America, which places a priority on securing its own interests and protecting the liberties of its citizens, and a subservient America, which repeatedly violates the rights of its citizens in the interest of the bi-factional ruling party and their inevitable wars against the various "Hitlers of the Month."
Freedom is not a Pavlovian response to a politician crying Hitler. War is not something to be embarked upon lightly and justified by little more than predictable rhetoric and improbable threats. And human liberty is not a given; Americans should think long and hard before casually throwing away what their forefathers fought so hard to gain.