The history of repetition (BushCo Lies) --Guardian News Blog

[Demeter]

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/08/30/the_history_of_repetition.html



As the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, the Bush administration has embarked on a campaign to bolster waning public support for its foreign policy. George Bush is to kick off a series of speeches, starting tomorrow at the annual convention of the American Legion, a veterans' group. The warm-up acts came yesterday with speeches from the secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and the secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld.

While Ms Rice gave a nuanced speech, Mr Rumsfeld went in guns blazing. First he took his audience on a "history lesson" reminding them of the spirit of appeasement that took hold in the face of fascism and Nazism. It is worth quoting what he said at length: "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 appeased, then the carnage and destruction of the then-recent memory of World War I might be avoided. It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among the western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis - the rise of fascism and Nazism - were ridiculed and ignored."

Mr Rumsfeld did not call critics of the administration's current policies "appeasers" as such, but he did not have to, leaving his audience to join the dots for themselves. When things go wrong, as they are in Iraq, policy makers have a tendency to frame their difficulties in the broadest canvas possible, a common enough recourse to whip up public support. Comparisons with epochal events are drawn, rhetorical overdrive kicks in (as in Tony Blair's arc of crisis) and problems are given the apocalyptic treatment.

First we had the global war on terror, now we have an America at war with "Islamic fascists". This is George Bush's new handy term to lump together groups as diverse as Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Iran and the militias in Iraq blowing each other up. These groups use terror tactics, they may not like the US and Britain, but to label them all as "Islamic fascists" is intellectual laziness. They all have their own specific grievances and separate struggles. Hamas' quarrel is with Israel, not the US, ditto Hizbullah. The Taliban is fighting Nato forces to recover the power it once had. Iran's main preoccupation is its dispute with the US over its nuclear programme, although it arms and holds sway over Hizbullah. As for Iraq, the situation seems to have degenerated into a power struggle or vendettas between various factions.
The US overlooked the strong nationalistic forces at work underneath the ideology of communism and it is in danger of making the same mistake by using terms such as Islamic fascists. Mr Rumsfeld does not help matters by seeking to compare current critics of US policy with those who advocated appeasement.