Ironically, it is Germany that has pointedly shown the rest of the world that George W. Bush’s march to war and attendant post-9/11 totalitarian trends in the world can be blocked through an election process. The German Red-Green coalition fought off a challenge by Christian Democrat leader Edmund Stoiber of Bavaria, a right-wing bastion, which like many southern American states, is a home to intolerance, bigotry, xenophobia, and right-wing fanatical politicians. Stoiber even announced that if his party won, Germany wanted a final financial settlement from the Czech Republic for post-war German refugees from Sudetenland! (Yes, you are reading this correctly, it is the same parcel of territory that the Nazis used as justification to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938). The election success of Germany’s Social Democrat/Green coalition follows by weeks the election victory by Sweden’s Social Democrats. Democrats, moderate Republicans, and Greens in the United States should take heart from Germany and Sweden. The Bush-Rove attempt to capitalize on a future war with Iraq should mobilize progressives to turn out the vote in November and defeat the White House’s attempt to take the Senate, keep the House, pack the Supreme Court with fanatic fundamentalists, and further erode the Constitution of the United States.
However, Germany’s popular veto of American policy was not without its victims. After his thin election victory, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced that his Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin would not be back in his cabinet (although she will thankfully remain in the Bundestag). In an earlier campaign speech, Daeubler-Gmelin had likened Bush’s policies to those of Adolf Hitler. That incurred the wrath of Bush’s senior lieutenants, including the Soviet Union expert and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Of course, Rice’s ability to comprehend and analyze the post-Cold War world is problematic. As one Washington foreign policy sage put it, “having a Soviet expert as National Security Adviser is about as effective as having an expert on the Byzantine or Holy Roman Empires in that job.”
What happened to Daeubler-Gmelin was not much different than what befell Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney. Last April, McKinney questioned what Bush knew about the September 11 terrorist attack beforehand. Not surprisingly, she was pilloried by the right-wing. However, McKinney was also left defenseless by fellow Democrats. But with the release of the much-awaited Senate-House Joint Intelligence Committee Staff Statement, McKinney has been vindicated. The bi-partisan committee concluded that one of the highest classified items of information still being withheld from the committee is Bush’s pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attack: “the President’s knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this Inquiry remains classified even when the substance of that information has been declassified.”
Daeubler-Gmelin’s job as Justice Minister gave her deep insight into the future plans of Bush and his fascistic Attorney General John Ashcroft. As Justice Minister, Daeubler-Gmelin has been intimately involved with Washington’s global plans for controlling the Internet; monitoring e-mail communications; and sharing intelligence on political, religious and social rights groups. These discussions, which have included Daeubler-Gmelin, have taken place between Justice and Interior Ministers under the aegis of the Group of Eight (G8) countries. The United States will soon have an Interior Minister at future meetings in the guise of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Daeubler-Gmelin had a front row seat in the discussions that will lead to Bush’s Orwellian and Kafkaesque “New World Order.” So when she likened Bush’s war rhetoric to that of Hitler’s, she had a unique insight. When Bush announced in his new national security strategy that the United States reserved the right to launch pre-emptive attacks on adversaries who threaten U.S. interests, Daeubler-Gmelin can be forgiven if she thought the rhetoric sounded like that from the dais of the Reichstag in 1938. After all, Hitler said Germany attacked defenseless Poland in 1939 because the Poles had “attacked” a German border outpost and Germany had to prevent a pre-emptive “Polish invasion,” Germany’s ally, Japan, used such reasoning in its attack on Pearl Harbor. It reasoned a pre-emptive attack on the American Pacific Fleet would give it time to consolidate its hold on its East Asian “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Japan’s version of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Daeubler-Gmelin’s comments were vilified just as those of Canadian Prime Minister’s comments about Western “greed”(e.g., Bush’s Big Oil friends) being responsible for breeding the type of anti-Western hatred that resulted in the September 11 attack. What the right-wing wants in the world is the same kind of self-censorship that people in Nazi Germany imposed upon themselves. It is absolutely true that Bush wants to rattle sabers to get the minds of Americans off of a shattered economy, ballooning deficits, Enron, and the “disappeared” being held incommunicado by Ashcroft’s Gestapo. The only problem with likening Bush to Hitler is that such a comparison might unfair to Hitler. Adolf Hitler wrote a book whereas it can be argued whether Bush ever completely read one.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
