Bush is to Churchill as I Am To A Physicist

How foolish is this obsession Junior has for old Winston?

How does the term "Islamofascist" add up with the reality of facsim, as defined by its founder, old Benito?

Where, in Osama's game (if it is his game), are the corporatists, who are necessary for fascism to take hold? Who are they? Exxon Mobile, Shell, the military-industrial-security complex in general? Who the hell are the corporate heads who are supporting Osama and his gang of dunderheads?

It isn't difficult, in the least, to pick out the ones who are supporting Bush and Cheney.

Wouldn't it be wild if the ones supporting BuCheney are the same ones who are supporting Osama?

Actually, we wouldn't find it all that surprising.

Another "intelligence" failure

I doubt journalist-historian Lynne Olson will be getting any more congratulatory notes from Karl Rove, who, in a moment of characteristic disorientation, recently praised her for her book, "Troublesome Young Men."

The book is a history of those rugged conservative members of British parliament who, in 1940, ousted the appeasing Neville Chamberlain and elevated the belligerent Winston Churchill to the prime ministership, recognizing, as did Mr. Churchill, the unappeasability of the Nazi regime.

But in reading it (as George Bush, reportedly, is doing now), Mr. Rove stumbled on a bit of a misinterpretation: He seemed to think Ms. Olson's book implicitly compared today's plucky band of Islamofascist fighters to the British antifascist stalwarts of the 1930s, and thus, Mr. Bush to Mr. Churchill.

Whoops. For Ms. Olson, in this morning's Washington Post, has clarified things for Mr. Rove, who, I believe, reads newspapers, and who, it would be my guess, immediately raced into the presidential study to order George to put the scurrilous book down. For Ms. Olson, in her clarification, pointed out that if there's any comparison to be made, it is between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.

What I can't imagine is the degree of sickly whiteness that surely pervaded Mr. Rove's face as he read the article. It was devastating, even deliciously cruel, in its corrective drift. Clinically, surgically, methodically she dismantled any legitimate Churchillian claim laid by the Bushies and the chief Bushie himself -- Mr. Bush.

Mr. Churchill, she proffered, "would snort ... at the administration's equation of 'Islamofascism,' an amorphous, ill-defined movement of killers forced to resort to terrorism by their lack of military might, to Nazi Germany, a global power that had already conquered several countries before Churchill took office in 1940." In addition, she quotes a prime ministerial insider of the era as observing that "The key word in any understanding of Winston Churchill is the simple word 'Liberty.' He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion."

On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain was merely a ghastly preview of what would come transatlantically 60 years later. He was vastly inexperienced in world affairs, narrow-minded, isolated, naive, unilateralist in temperament, authoritarian and dogmatic, and contemptuous of "subordinate" legislative opinion. Furthermore, "Chamberlain badgered and intimidated the press, restricted journalists' access to sources and claimed that anyone who dared criticize the government was guilty of disloyalty and damaging the national interest."

The ultimately disgraced prime minister also regarded civil liberties as a casual nicety to be toyed with at independent will -- "Just as Bush has done, Chamberlain authorized the wiretapping of citizens without court authorization," Churchill being one of them -- and generally regarded himself as the final word, judge and arbiter of all, as he inched closer and closer to the enemy's temperament that he claimed to despise.

Until Mr. Bush's rise to inept power, Neville Chamberlain, I believe it can be safely put, occupied the top pedestal in the pantheon of ungodly boobs. But move over, Neville. You've some fierce competition -- and it's so dumb it doesn't even see the likeness.

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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free