History repeats itself
Some twenty years ago, as I
wanted to improve my knowledge of spoken German, I asked a friend, who was
a professor of German, to lend me some tapes.
I made copies of them and I came across that series a few days ago
while putting some order in my office. There
were nice things, like a translation of the Little Prince of St-Exupéry, one
of Snow White and some speeches of Adolf Hitler during the years just before
World War II.
Listening to those tapes again,
I was struck by the similarity of Hitler's tone with the rhetoric of George
W. Bush, and to some extent of Tony Blair, during the last year or so.
Even the same slightly hysterical constant repetitions of blocks of
words, the same appeal to superficial feelings of fear, and the same conscience
of a messianic vocation to transform the world. The same uneducated arrogance
towards the rest of the world that would be extremely ridiculous if it were
not so tragic.
Isn't the reaction of the vast
majority of USA citizens identical to the reaction of the vast majority of
German people, who blindly followed Hitler right into catastrophe? And isn't the largely passive attitude of the
international community very similar to the weak verbal pro forma protest
of the Western nations when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938?
More frightening still
: the way the aggression against Iraq is planned (similar to that of Kosovo
and of Afghanistan) -- using massive bombings involving a huge amount of "collateral
damage" in order to avoid any casualty on the side of the aggressor --
reveals a philosophy very similar to that of Nazism : human life does not
count if it is not American life.
The occupation of Rhineland
in 1936 was really the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. The occupation of Iraq may very well be the
beginning of the end of Bush's Empire. But
how many countries will be invaded and many thousands of deaths before the
end is reached?
Furthermore, the doctrine
of "preventive war" is a dangerous two-edge sword. If Bush's USA finds that it is justified to
attack a country because it thinks that one day it might attack the USA, will
not many countries consider that they are in danger of being attacked by the
USA and consider themselves entitled to their own preventive attack (of a
kind or another) against the USA? And
if one country claims the right to decide in which other country of the world
a regime change is necessary are not many countries going to feel entitled
to seek, in their own way, a regime change in the USA?
The civilized (but is
it?) world is embarking onto a terribly dangerous path.
Armand Veilleux