No. I am comparing them to the (no longer extant) nationalist parties (like the one the Prussian squires favoured) which were suckered into supporting Hitler in the 1933 election when Hindenburg was presented as a figurehead.
These people had experienced the Weimar Republic go worse as the global economy suffered two significant shocks. They were concerned about the good values that had grown from Nationalism (which in Germany coincided with a rise of democracy under monarchy, and had been tempered by the realpolitik of one of the greatest nationalists, Bismarck, who also hailed from their camp).
The stock marked collapse of 2001 has been compared to Black Friday. That event BTW was one of the milestones for the rise of the NSDAP as a slightly respectable political force. The election debacle of the Florida vote count and the current discussion about Democracy by court decisions (an unholy phenomenon over here as well), paired with the final breakdown of the social systems over here in Europe which stupidly cling to human labour as their source of revenues when human labour has become a marginal factor in economy should be seen as incitive in my comparison. While our current democracy over here is light-years more stable than Weimar (which had a quite good constitutional law, too), we face a breakdown of the system our parents have depended on for their old age. Coupled with the stock market troubles, I have little confidence that I will receive much of a pension, if retirement somewhere at age 70 still is an option then.
>From what I hear in our news, the economic gap between well-to-do and
destitude grows in the USA as well. We haven't arrived at the 1932
situation yet. I hope we won't.
> There's a few relevant differences, among them that
> Republicans genuinely believe in freedom and democracy
Well, one of my grandfathers happened to be a right wing nationalist (Deutschnational) who was opposed to Hitler but, as a member of one of these parties, all of a sudden experienced "Gleichschaltung" (assimilation by the NSDAP, and in his case even assimilation by the SS). (I won't go into details other that my other grandfather immigrated 1934 from Austria...)
> (not a major party value among Nazis) and want no part
> of empire by conquest. Your implication to the
> contrary undermines the credibility of your entire
> position.
Well, the "preemptive strike" paradigm has hit a very sore space in my family history.
In Germany, we have been taught to learn from our history the hard way. It seems the lesson has stuck, even though now there are German soldiers in out of area missions - something 50 years ago nobody would have wanted to see. Thus we feel uncomfortable with the amount of power united in a single person office as the President of the United States, because we have seen the results of a technically free and democratic election in 1933 to an office which (technically, theoretically) carried a lot less power.
In addition the manner how elections are conducted in the US makes certain that only demagogues get elected. Demagogues in positions of critical power make me nervous, as soon as moral control gets replaced by (however justified) moral outrage.
(I live in a country where hardly anyone knows the text of the national anthem, where the flag is a piece of cloth in black, red and a yellow called gold rather than a rallying point for moral. At best, it is a rallying point for hooligans. Nobody here would dream to have school prayers include the gouvernment or its leaders. It is a country whose foreign policy has only in the last 12 years been that of a sovereign state. I hope this explains my strained relations to nationalism - over here, that has become the province of inebriated soccer fans. I hate to see those in charge at elections, I would hate to see their "popular" vote carrying power in decisions.)
>> The only proven instance of support of terrorism
>> outside of their own jurisdiction I have encountered
>> so far was the suicide bombers' pension paid to
>> extremist Palestines. Which is a lot less than legal
>> Saudi organisations have on their record.
> One war at a time, please.
My sentiment exactly, that is why I am so angry about the hands-off policy of the USA in Palestine. That conflict has been the breeding ground for al Quaeda sentiments for longer than I live.
> Well, OK, two, but Afghanistan is a small one.
Face it - a lot of the bad feelings against the USA result from their position in the Palestine conflict.
I do advocate the right for the Israeli to have their state in Palestine. Likewise, I do advocate the right for the Palestines to have their state somewhere in Palestine, too. This other position has been lacking in US policy, and the UN veto has been over-used.
> Fundamentally, you are right about Saudi. Cutting off
> their oil money over the medium term would be one of
> the best things we could do for the war on terror.
> Hydrogen fuel cells anyone?
I would love to have hydrogen fuel cells, from an ecologist POV if nothing else. Wonderfull stuff, these windmills, only not continuously online.
>> What I still miss in Bush's War Against Terror are
>> 20000 or so GIs or international forces under US
>> command in Palestine, to stop the mutual
>> terror there. Now that would be a worthy task, and
>> possibly tackling a lot of the troubles at the root.
> I don't see how that could possibly work. Can you
> expound upon it further? How would that not simply be
> giving Palestinean and Israeli extremists covenient
> targets (assuming here, that we chose to police a
> position not sateisfactory to either side)?
Equal measures against both sides and something like a UN conducted trial similar to the Nuernberg prequels against terrorist leaders of both sides. If this means that established politicians are interrogated, be it.
I fear that anything less decapicitating can yield no results.
As to convenient targets, that is one of my gripes with the execution of the Iraq occupation. The situation there is thoroughly different from Afghanistan, where there is a positive reception of the controlling forces by at least a majority of the populace.
It must have been clear to Bush and Blair that while taking the Iraq was possible, calming it would be difficult. One reason for the bluff no from Germany and France was the public opinion that there was no thought-out strategy for the time after the occupation.
(Another reason is the quite different concept of Terrorism between the Anglo-Saxon and the Old European nations. Perhaps it is the past experience with our own terrorists from the 70ies, the Red Army Fraction, AKA Baader-Meinhof group.)
BTW, during the offensive the British approach to the population carried about the same risk as the US approach (danger of snipers and suicide bombers), but gave the people less the impression that the invaders came to conquer. I know I would not want to march there, and I would likely be paranoid as hell if I had to, but to appear as conquerors just breeds partisans. If anything, that seems to be a lesson learned from the British military presence in Ulster.
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