The More Things Change
Here's an excerpt from President Obama's speech to commemorate D-Day:
We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It’s a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it’s all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.
The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate and humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.
I think this clear distinction between then and now doesn't hold up.
Decades ago, during the rise of fascism, we also lived in a world of varied religions and cultures. There were just as many ideas then--maybe more--about what was the proper form of government. And certainly there were a lot of people in America who didn't think we should get involved with the war in Europe--sure, Germany declared war on us, but they weren't really a threat.
Today, we're in a struggle with an opponent that wishes to take over the world, that's declared war on us, that's willing to kill, and that opposes democracy and basic human rights. Call it fascism, call it what you like--if you're willing to use the world evil, how can you not use it to describe our enemy?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:04 AM
2 Comments:
The difference is between the a major group of industialized counries with the power and might to subjugate other powerful countries versus a group of cave dwellers with a satellite phone
I would hope 9/11 exposed that fallacy.
I'm talking about about all those who support terror and oppose modernity, and they number in the tens of millions, or perhaps more. (I'm leaving out the hundreds of millions who are sympathetic, and are also mostly subjugated, by the way.)
They've already inflicted quite a bit of damage in the West, and considerably more elsewhere. They've had the run of countries. Yes, they don't yet have the power the former fascists had, and that's a good thing. But they already are spread out a lot wider, and, it's not hard to imagine, may someday possess a weapon that would have won the war for Nazi Germany.
It's a mistake to figure the politics of the past offered easy moral choices. Back then, fighting Hitler was opposed by all the smart people in certain social sets. (Other groups even liked him.) The world had to wait until war was inevitable, and tens of millions died. Now we can look back and wish they'd taken on the fascists of that eraa when they were weaker than the fascists of today are.
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