Here in New England, people look forward to April as the days turn longer, and warmer and the first signs of Spring emerge. The young, and young at heart, often recite the old standard, "April showers bring May flowers." Unfortunately, in far too many parts of world, April is not a month to look forward to, as April is well on its way to becoming known as a month of tragedy; one with a strange and deadly history.
"It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way Obama's statement yesterday can be true," said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant. "Obama's frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief."
The above is a confident statement from a confident American political operative, working for a jittery party that senses its own demise. Desperate for any political traction, they grasped today upon Obama's mis-statement that his relative liberated Auschwitz, and not Buchenwald.
For this small historical gaffe, the GOP would have us infer that Barack Obama is not fit to be President of the United States.
But what is the greater gaffe, mislabeling one of several Nazi concentration camps, or misunderstanding the lessons of the Holocaust as our country stumbles, and trips, and reaches for light straws of hope as we seek to restore our moral authority as the world's leader on human rights after the abuses at Abu Ghirab and the ongoing detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?
There was a time when a man who rails against "international bankers" and the "Illuminati" and who cites the design of the $1 bill as evidence of an occult-Masonic "New World Order" conspiracy would have been seen as something of a crank. But not any more, apparently, if the success of John Hagee is anything to go by. Max Blumenthal has already highlighted the cosy relations between the conspiracy theorist and AIPAC; now Hagee has had the satisfaction of seeing John McCain come as a suppliant for votes at the Washington conference of Christians United for Israel, of which he is the prime mover (along with some more urbane figures, such as David Brog).
Then I wrote:
Bartholomew's post gets even more explosive, as I'll explore in a follow-up diary.
Now's the time to make good on that promise. Hagee, you see, is the driving force behind Christians United for Israel, a "Christian Zionist" counterpart to AIPAC that's orders of maginitude more powerful than the Nation Of Islam ever dreamed of being. And what Christian Zionists want is nothing short of the destruction of Israel, America, and the rest of the world as we know it. They think the Apocalypse is a good thing. Health care??? Education??? Jobs??? PHOOEY! Blood and guts for everyone!
Compared to them, the neocons are just sissies....
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