The Mythology of Munich

INDIANA JONES is fiction. but the search for occult religious articles by hitler to help reinforce his power and justify his racial policies was all to real. and reflected in the series. fiction, well done, can be a warning. it can be instructive. and can be a lie- see 'elders of zion'. and should not be so lightly dismissed(see, 1984) after all, the R's that voted for bush believed he actually went to guard meetings and there were WMD's in iraq. but you just keep an eye on Obama. but, all- in- all, it is refreshing in this election that america has 2 quality candidates to chose from. that is if mccain can send the facist/neo-con wing of the gop back into the political wilderness where they can do no more harm to the Constitution and our freedoms.

first of all the thread i see running thru many of the comments is mr. thomas' piece wandered and lacked focus. second it is apparent that the space involved did not allow for full historic context, both C and L definitions. third- it really did not fully inform the reader what exactly appeasement took place in munich. maybe he used historic shorthand thinking the modern american knows american history. much less world history-one assumes that at ones one peril. fourth, C's drawing conclusions using - "what if's" - is just as false as liberlas doing the same thing. the "what actually happened " is more important. i think someone made that point somewhere. fifth, it was german C's that made hitler possible and international capitalist/industrialist who saw him as a bullwork v. communism, not liberals(see pat c's book for reasoning examples). the sins of hitler are theirs(C's) not the liberals. much like saddam the west thought they could control him. it was same "C" who saw the facist model and admired it. got government out of the market! hell. it made government THE MARKETPLACE! liked that. where am i-sixth? mr thomas should have explained the u.s. isolationism which made overt aid to the allies early(in an effort to muzzle hitler) on imposible was almost entirely a conservative(no alliences)/right wing animal in the period. not a liberal impulse. and finally, seventh- thank God that the law of unintended consequences kicked in and saved us. the japanese were craven/greedy/racist enough to bomb pearl harbor and start ww2. and hitler, sorely in need of a navy for his global war, joined in(he did not fear mongerel america). that one act caused both sides to join together until peace broke out, and the blame game continues. see pat b.'s excerpt as to why this day folks think hitler was right and why he could move forward in 1938 using bush - like spin.

Since you decided to ignore all of my questions and pleas for clarification or proof of some sort supporting your views, and instead repeated the same catch phrases from previous posts, it is clear you are not up to the task of a dialogue with any meaningful content. Nevertheless, I just can't help myself. Why??

I'm going to ignore the whole Bush-Obama, neither of them really talking to each other per se (or even mentioning names), but carrying on a dialogue via the media (Bush at a speech at the Knesset (sp?), and Obama in a campaign speech or two). I'm also not going to talk about how it was the media who responded so much to Bush's speech (often playing clips of Obama) with such shock, not Obama himself. I am not talking about those points, because they really don't matter. Moving on???

Yes, millions of soldiers died in World War II--let's blame Chamberlain for that. Hey, the Holocaust happened in World War II, too, didn't it? Who shall we blame for that? How about FDR? If he wouldn't have made the colossal folly of entering the war too late, those millions of people would have been saved, too! Of course, Chamberlain should have known better than to try saving millions of lives by avoiding a great war. I mean, it's in the history books and everything! Hitler attacks Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then France! Duh! Who was I to try to argue with you? You obviously prove Chamberlain's faults by pointing out a bunch of people died in a war he tried to prevent.

You have no idea how everything would have turned out had Chamberlain declared war on Germany (neither do I or anyone else, for that matter). Most likely, millions would have died anyway in what would have been seen by many as a hastily aggressive act. I will not have the blood of our fathers and grandfathers used as a cheap means of obtusely winning an argument! Have you ever thought about the impossibilities they were dealing with at the time? Public opinion (very against war); worrying about the Soviet Union (and its maniacal leader), Japan, Italy, civil wars in Spain and China, etc.; needing time to catch up to the German war machine so they could prosecute an EFFECTIVE war in the future; practically a guarantee that the US (the only power capable of defeating Germany) would not be there to back Britain. Sure, someone from today who knows how history went would stop Germany at Czechoslovakia if he could. But if that person were really smart, he would stunt the problem at its root, and eliminate the necessity for having immense cemeteries with graves full of brave, patriotic soldiers. That person would correct the problems in the Versailles Treaty, thereby alleviating the stress in Germany that brought Hitler to power, convince the US Congress to accept the invitation to the League of Nations, giving it the credibility needed to stop the likes of Hitler, and prepare public opinion so that people wouldn't be isolationist and overly fearful of declaring a just war.

Every time I hear the examples of Munich or Vietnam used to draw inept or faulty conclusions about foreign policy, I am reminded of an episode of the Simpsons in which Homer had dreamed up a scheme of some sort, started imagining how it would go, and was loving all of it???until a random bee that had nothing to do with his plan showed up in his day dream and stung him. He quickly decided not to carry out his plan, because that bee sting in his dream hurt.

Often the only similarities between the Munich debacle and current events are that we don???t get along well with another country, or the other country is causing trouble in some way or other. But refusing to carry on dialogue with a country solely because of that sort of similarity is akin to refusing to cook because one time you touched a hot burner. Well, don???t touch the burner when it???s hot then, dummy! You can still cook! Or if you???re afraid of the stove, use the microwave, at least.

Do you refuse to drive on streets with white cars on them, because you heard in the news that one time in the past an insane asylum escapee, who was driving a stolen white car, rammed another driver into an elementary school playground, thereby slaughtering scores of innocent children? ???If only that driver would have avoided all white cars, he could have saved those children???s lives.??? Does that make sense? Sure, in hindsight, if that particular driver had avoided all white cars, those particular children would not have died at his hands. I guess that proves everyone must avoid all white cars, right? Better yet, stop manufacturing white cars, and repaint all white cars currently in existence. Problem solved.

It is not minimizing past tragedies to inform people when they are drawing erroneous parallels to the present. While it might be understandable that you have heart palpitations when you encounter white cars, in order to remain sane yourself, you need to acknowledge that it is an irrational fear. At least stop criticizing others for not being irrationally afraid of white cars. Fear insane asylum escapees, sure???especially if they are behind the wheel???but not white cars.

Bush never proposed to lead by analogy whether it is Chamberlains gross optimism leading to the the invasion of Poland, Chekloslavakia etc., culminating in German invasion of France, or any other analogy history has to teach us!
But it sure is amazing how quick Obama and company were to get all bent out of shape by Bushes' mention of those troubled times in Europe, that long ago!
Now once long ago was this other thing, boys and girls! Historians call it The Trojan Horse. The people it vanquished actually worshiped the thing! Welcomed the thing! There wasn't an analogy for those people to guide their impulses. They payed a terrible price! Chamberlain's countrymen did to!
The whole world did.

Hey, retired marine, thanks for the service.
Thought that I might comment on the concept of our government being "evil" from another direction.
We were born in revolt, having become tired of oppressive government from England. The men who finally framed our constitution debated long and hard before finishing that unique document. The underlying theme of their debate, stated in today's slang, would be that basically government "sucks". They meant, of course, that government's overwhelming power eventually always came to bear too hard on the people and that government always abused that power in time after acquiring it. The idea that they settled upon was to try to compromise that power by sort of creating three governments in one, the Executive, Legislative and the Judiciary, each with equal power. It was intended that when one of these tried to get too strong, one or both of the other two would check any abuse of power and create a balance again before things got out of hand into dictatorship. It still works that way, and I hope that it never quits because government really "sucks" and is "evil" in fact unless we continue to check its tendency to abuse that aphrodisiac of power.
We have just seen an example of this in the decision to grant writs of habeas corpus to those held in Guantanamo for five years without a hearing. The Executive branch went too far and the Judicial branch checked it and restored the balance.

Oil and war, war and oil. Environmental destruction. Endless greed. US corporations getting tax breaks while shipping jobs overseas to countries that have no environmental protection laws, no workers' rights, no human rights. Countries where people are factory slaves and the air is so polluted you can hardly breathe. US military violating the Geneva convention, torturing prisoners. US government imprisoning people without charging them with any crimes, and holding them for years without trial. Working class Americans losing their homes in a mortgage banking scandal, and the government bails out the banks, not the working people.

It's simple:

If you are sickened by these things, vote for Obama. If you think these are good things, vote for McCain.

I'm a Republican and I own two corporations. I thought it would be a cold day in hell before I ever said anything like this. But the unprecedented corporate greed aided and abetted by an unscrupulous Presidential administration is now starting to take down the US economy. I have to stand up and protest.

Corporations are good only insofar as they strengthen America. When they start to weaken us, we need to re-evaluate the rules and regulations governing business.

And we need to get rid of George W. Bush, along with all of his misguided policies that have dragged our once proud nation into the mud.

What would you have us do??? Bush threatened Saddam with the military buildup, Saddam never blinked however and continued to play games with the inspectors that CLINTON allowed to be pushed out. Bush had to invade the country as Saddam was not detered. Let us not forget the shuffling of inspectors and the refusal of inspectors to search out some of his palaces. This was the ultimate reason for the invasion of Iraq not some fake documents. Hussein brought the war on his own head.

The premise that America has gone astray abroad is ignorant. Vietnam and Iraq were proper actions taken by the commander in chief of ALL America, not just of left wing Newsweek columnists. Pseudo intellectual slicing and dicing and distracting is the oldest trick in the book in the building of a lie. Appeasement and ostrich behavior is what it is, and will not be confused by whether it is Hitler or Ahmadinejad or Iraq or Vietnam.

jimdyl, the president is the servant of the people who elected him, and subject to impeachment if he screws up. He has screwed up big time and I am sad that Pelosi ever took impeachment off the table. Bush will be lucky if the world court doesn't charge him with war crimes. You can forget making a dictator out of him. We never made a place for one in our constitution, though a few have tried. Iraq is already one of the biggest screwups in American History. People will line up to wee wee on Bush's library.