To say that there is a lot of antipathy for the Bush regime would be an understatement. I was vaguely aware of similar dissent during the 1960’s, but I was too young to understand it then.  I do recall family elders dismissing Viet Nam war protesters and “hippies” as communists.  In those days, the word “communist” was an epithet that was used with genuine scorn and derision.  Like the pixelated photo of Lincoln, with distance the image begins to form.  Vague similarities between the times are gradually being recognized. Today you hear Bush conservatives spitting the word “liberal”, often with the phrase “cut and run”.  The allusion, of course, is that liberals will spontaneously take “French Leave” when in power, abandoning the Iraqi people and thereby soiling the memories of soldiers who have fallen in Iraq.  So the theory goes.

There is some interesting content at VDARE.com concerning Gulf War II (GWII).  The author is Paul Craig Roberts.  He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.  Mr. Roberts apparently had some sort of epiphany as a political insider and has come out against how the Bush cabal has prosecuted GWII.  Anyway, he makes some interesting points-

“To date more than 100,000 US troops who are veterans of these wars have been granted disability compensation. Although the US cannot put on the ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million troops have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged of which 100,000 are receiving disability payments.

Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says that the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans suffering 30% to 100% disability. Apparently, one of the severe forms of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not count as a physical wound.”

As a news junkie, I’m at least average in attentiveness to such things and I’ve heard precious little about US casualties. If the above is true, then it needs to be announced morfrom every hill top.

Or, consider this unsavory comparison-

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler’s drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany’s right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use “American exceptionalism” and “the war on terror.” There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses “signing statements” to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: “A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people.”

“You are with us or against us.”

Here, Roberts may be going a bit non-linear on us.  Read “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer.  While Bush II is clearly not on the same philosophical or moral plane as Adolph Hitler, nor as cunning for that matter, the fact is that his handlers are using rhetorical tools from an age-old playbook.  That is, whipping up public fear as a means to concentrate power.  Really, the Bush cabal is mythologizing a foe to achieve an unprecedented concentration of power for the executive branch.  The point of the Hitler comparison is that this kind of consolidation of power has precedent. 

Finally, I’ll agree with those who say that Bush II isn’t smart enough to do this on his own. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that this fellow is much more than a frat boy with a golden name.  Bush and his merry men have managed to make a mess of things and it will take generations of other people to smooth it out.  Recall that we still have troops in Japan and Korea and the veterans of those wars are now passing of old age.