Comments on: Time to revise Godwin’s Law for Ahmadinejad?

By: Gerard Van der Leun

Gerard Van der Leun — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:15:40 +0000

What can I say? Zelig of Cyberspace c’est moi.

By: Gerard Van der Leun

Gerard Van der Leun — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:14:55 +0000

Well, Roger, there’s no mystery at all once you understand the official correlary to Godwin’s Law:

Mike Godwin writing in Wired 2.10: Meme, Counter-meme

“Van der Leun’s Corollary: As global connectivity improves, the
probability of actual Nazis being on the Net approaches one.”

By: photoncourier.blogspot.com

photoncourier.blogspot.com — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:08:29 +0000

Anyone who believes “deterrence” will ensure our safety vs a nuclear-armed Iran should keep one Hitler-related point in mind: Toward the end, Hitler decided the German people had failed him, and actively *wanted* Germany to be destroyed (and indeed, issued orders to that effect)

Had Hitler possessed a nuclear-armed version of the V-2 missile…with sufficient command and control to ensure his orders would be carried out…can anyone doubt that he would have issued the launch order?..***even if the Allies had possessed equivalent means of retaliation***?

Application to the case of Iran is left as an exercise for the reader.

By: klrfz1

klrfz1 — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 12:00:35 +0000

Here's another Ahmadinejad quote:

"If, by accident, the American government saw reason, it would respect the wish of the Iraqi people to form its government, respect the Palestinian government, free the prisoners of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, cease the conspiracy (and) not create tension in the Persian Gulf region," from here

This is the current Democratic Party position, except he left out "BUSH LIED". Ahmadinejad may be more rational than Howard Dean. I am an optimist. Though it's difficult to see the silver lining to this cloud, isn't it true that the atmospheric dust thrown up by a few dozen nuclear explosions in the Middle East would reverse the recent warming trend in the Earth's climate? The increase in global mortality rates due to breathing radioactive dust would help to mitigate global overpopulation. And, with the increase in birth defects, even more abortions will be "necessary". A hat-trick indeed. You know, with such a terrific humanitarian outcome, Ahmadinejad might win a Nobel Peace Prize for this!

By: Kevin Peters

Kevin Peters — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 04:50:18 +0000

Roger:
I think the Hitler comparison is valid. My only objection to it is that it allows the person you are debating with room to deny the comparison rather then focus on the insanity of Iran’s new leader. This is strictly a tactical suggestion. I used to get into argumnets regarding communism and I often found myself dragged into silly arguments about who was worse, Stalin or Hitler. In my mind this was like debating the difference between a child molester who attacks his victim everyday and one that does it three times a week. After a while I would cede the point to the communist apologist and get back to making him discuss Stalin and communism in general. The Hitler of the 30’s and the self blinding denial that Europe and America showed while ignoring the threat is an excellent argument regarding Iran. I just think the material regarding Ahmadinejad is so rich that it is wiser to focus on him and leave Hitler out of it.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:29:20 +0000

While I’d never compare myself to Churchill, haven’t we seen this movie before? I think I have some sense as to how he must have felt during the gathering storm in the ’30’s. This too won’t end well, or soon, and the blood price will weigh heavy on most of us, but some more than others.

By: AST

AST — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:48:24 +0000

It really doesn’t matter whether he’s insane or just evil. I mean, you don’t worry about the distinction when you’re confronted by an angry pit bull. Maybe he’s a trained attack dog or just one who’s been beaten too often. The main thing is to save yourself from the beast.

I’m not sure the media and the Senate Democrats get that. They seem more intent on censuring or impeaching Bush and investigating things that happened four years ago, than in trying to lead and serve the American people. There are certainly some Republicans acting the same way, but the President is not. He’s focused on a strategy for dealing with terrorism by striking at its roots. His critics seem to be focused on finding more nits to pick as their old claims about no WMD dissolve around them.

That is irresponsible, and shows a deep degree of unseriousness about them. They are like people on a raft headed for the falls whose only concern is that they should be controlling the tiller.

By: ForNow

ForNow — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:40:43 +0000

I bring up Hitler & Stalin all the time. Back on Sept. 13, 2001 I posted in my building a few paragraphs in which I said that new technologies will be moving off the drawing boards and dropping “into the hands of Hitlers & Stalins on the street who think themselves prophets, heroes, saints.” My neighbors were taken aback by the thought. The monsters’ names have been trivialized at places like the DailyKos, but not everywhere.

Think of the islamofascists, but also of AUM in Japan, and of the kind of destructionists inspired by Prof. Eric R. Pianka in what seems his nudging & winking.

I used to compare Saddam with Hitler and in particular Stalin. Saddam had a whole bookcase of books on Stalin.

From a poem “The Kremlin Mountaineer” by Osip Mandelstam about Stalin (fuller version at Horsefeathers:

His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,

His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.

Around him a rabble of thin-necked leadersó
fawning half-men for him to play with.

They whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,

One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mengistu, Amin, Pol Pot, I like to mention them and the people who mass-murdered for them. An honest & reasonable comparison is a way of not forgetting the victims, and of honoring them in seeking to avoid the repetition of mass horror.

By: Barry Dauphin

Barry Dauphin — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:37:03 +0000

But the tone of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to a conference on the Palestinian issue was slightly more moderate than fiery rhetoric last year, when Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling a conference: “Israel must be wiped off the map.”

Well, I guess we now understand what Reuters means by “slightly more moderate”. Let’s see, Iran has just claimed membership to the nuclear club, and the first major public uttering by its president after this declaration is to predict that Israel will soon be wiped off the map (albeit in the metaphor of a tree falling in a storm). So Ahmadinejad moves from declaring a goal to suggesting that this goal is realistically achieveable fairly soon, and Reuters thinks this is more moderate. Gee, let’s invite ole Mahmoud over for barbacue.

I wonder if the pace of the Iranian announcements suggests that they feel that Iraq is becoming more stable, more quickly than they hoped and that their efforts to disrupt the democratic process in Iraq have not been as successful as they hoped, notwithstanding the headlines. The Iranians use different metrics for “success” than the NY Times.

By: David Thomson

David Thomson — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:29:49 +0000

ìBut because it tends to drag the argument into a rhetorical black hole.î

Not always. Sometimes itís simply an attempt by the far left to discourage one from logically describing an enemy of the United States. This is what Gore Vidal’s character does in Bob Roberts.