George Dubya Bush is (Not) the New Hitler

Dubya bashing is something I used to find fun. Not so much anymore, though.

First off, I'll admit it: the guy is a gay-bashing, election-stealing, Iraq-invading asshole and I don't like him any more than anyone else does. I find him to be a pretty reprehensible excuse for a world leader, and a black eye on the face of democracy.

But lately, those obsessed with Dubya bashing have made it little or no fun for the amateur Dubya bashers such as myself. Recently, I sat in one of my classes and listened to one of my classmates tell us about how Bush personifies all the problems discussed in post-modernist feminism, and couldn't help but think to myself: "oh, please".

Bush is not the new Hitler, as much as some people would like to have us believe. Second of all, an official visit to Canada by Bush is not the travesty many people would have us believe it is.

Let's swear off diplomatic relations with the world's most powerful head of state: yeah, that's real fucking smart.

What is funny to me, however, is the naivete that soaks through the anti-Bush movement. Many of these people obviously have little or no clue about what Bush is trying to accomplish, and what he is about. Not that Bush is trying to accomplish anything good, or that he stands for anything of the like, but there is a point to be made here.

Let's start with the war in Iraq. It was the wrong move, a violation of another nation's soveignty. Missile diplomacy has never worked for the United States, and no one should ever have had any expectation that it would. But there things this war is about, and things it is NOT about.

First off, this war is NOT about oil. Somehow, this point will be lost on the Bush-haters, but I'm going to make it anyway, and then allow the Bush-haters to prove their ignorance. The fact is, that Iraqi oil is not any more available to U.S. markets than it was prior to Saddam's war. Because there is a simple fact that many people over look pertaining to this issue: SADDAM WANTED TO SELL THE UNITED STATES OIL. In fact, he wanted to sell it to the entire Northern Hemisphere. The state of the Iraqi economy after the Persian Gulf war necessitated this, but the economic sanctions imposed by the United States wouldn't allow this, and for good reason: Saddam Hussein has a history of selling his country's natural rescources and then accumulating a clear majority of the wealth to him and his sons. This is a demonstrable fact, symbolized by the sheer number of lavish Presidential Palaces in Iraq, some of which are said to rival the palace of Versailles. Furthermore, this war is not about contracts for Halliburton, or profit for the American corporate/military/political complex. It is the American CMP complex that is paying for the rebuilding of Iraq.

This war is about something far more insidious than war: it is about political (not military, or economic) imperialism. It is about using Iraq as a base from which to re-concieve the Middle Eastern political climate as one that is friendly to the United States. And while trying to impose democracy on a culture with absolutely no democratic history that this can be based upon is nothing short of folly, it could arguably be a good move. After all, it worked in Germany and Japan following World War Two. Germany and Japan are both (arguably) better off for this democratization. However, recent events in Germany, particularly the resurgency of the Neo-Nazi party suggests that democracy may not have been successful as we would like to believe. Keep posted for further details.

However, this war was built on a lie. Maybe not so much a lie as "selective truth", but it was built on a sort of mistruth, nonetheless. The United States undermined a legitimate United Nations organization and undermined official diplomacy in order to launch their war on Iraq, and this cannot be ignored. These are the acts of a leader that is in some ways every bit as corrupt as Saddam Hussein (who, a lot of Bush-haters seem to have forgotten, is still a bad bad little boy).

Another point of anti-Bush contention of the Strategic Defense Initiative (or, was we all know it, Star Wars). Many people protest the development of the missile defense shield, but for these people, it would seem, a little lesson in the surrent state of affairs in the world is necessary. I'll try to dumb it down for them as much as I can:

You see, in the world today, we have these things called "Nuclear Missiles" these are things that make lots of other things go "boom" and kill lots and lots of people. They are a threat not only to individual nations but to all life on earth. As long as these things called "Nuclear Missiles" (are you following me?) continue to exist (and in some cases be controlled by irresponsible or dangerous rulers) than any nation that makes an attempt to build a defense against them is not doing anything wrong or, necessarily, aggressive, but are simply taking practical steps to ensure a defense against them. It's called "prudence".

Take, for example, Kim Jong Il in North Korea. This man controls Nuclear Weapons. This man is a very dangerous man. This man is so afraid of the United States, if he ever suspected that he could safely launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the Americans, he would do so. Even the Chinese (North Korea's closest allies) consider him to be a very dangerous rogue leader.

Of course, in the wake of massive tax cuts to the rich (money that has to be made up somewhere, obviously from the poor) this is a responsible move made in lieu of other responsible moves. When the poor are made poorer so that the rich can be made richer, something terribly wrong has happened. The last time I checked, this was supposed to be the 21st century, not the 19th century. Apparently, Dubya missed the memo.

And yes, Bush is a buffoon. If his father hadn't been a fairly successful president of the United States, Dubya probably could have never managed to even get on the ballots for the Republican Candidacy. This is a man who failed spectacularly at everything he has attempted in his life thus far. This is a man who deserted during the war in Vietnam, only to launch an equally disastrous war in Iraq -- statistics tell us that the same proportionate number of soldiers have thus far died in Iraq as in Vietnam.

Yes, it's OK to hate Bush. But let's hate Bush for the right reasons, instead of concocting reasons to hate him, or hating him for the reasons of a bunch of uber-"left"-wing hippies, the majority of whom could barely sneak through their respective universities by the skin of their teeth.