Rumsfeld compares war critics to Nazi appeasers

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces ``a new type of fascism'' and likened critics of the Bush administration's war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from ``moral or intellectual confusion'' about what threatens the nation's security. His remarks amounted to one of his most pointed defenses of President Bush' war policies and was among his toughest attacks on Bush's critics.

Speaking to several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failure to confront Hitler. He quoted Winston Churchill as observing that trying to accommodate Hitler was ``a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.''
``I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism,'' he said.
``Can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?'' he asked.
``Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America - not the enemy - is the real source of the world's troubles?''

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``You know from experience that in every war - personally - there have been mistakes and setbacks and casualties,'' he said. ``War is a series of catastrophes that results in victory.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6045931,00.html

(also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a mainstay of Internet culture, an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. It is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil".

The law states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

I have several responses, but most of them are exceptionally angry ones and I think I will cool off just a bit before sending an LTTE to the newspaper. Thanks for the post!

we all have to become good little Nazis?

Or, in the words of Frank Burns:

The way I see it, unless we each conform, unless we obey orders, unless we follow our leaders blindly, there is no possible way we can remain free.

"M*A*S*H: The Novocaine Mutiny"