Bounty On Bush: Are Americans Still In Denial About The Iraq War?

By Christine Garvin On June 4, 2009 · 19 Comments

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In Hitler’s Germany, we wonder how the citizens remained silent. But when it comes to Iraq, are Americans guilty of doing nothing?

Human cost of war/ Photo: soundfromwayout

A former German Parliament member, judge, and apparently an honorary Colonel of the US Army has made a controversial offer.

Dr Jurgen Todenhofer promises a million dollars to the person who “brings George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair in a fair and legal procedure before an American or an international court on the grounds of the wounding and killing of thousands of American GIs and of the torture, dismemberment and killing of hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqi civilians.”

Very bold.

Even bolder, he essentially compares the tactics of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair to Hitler by referencing the Nuremburg war crimes tribunal, which stated:

To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime – differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within it the accumulated evil of all crimes of war.

This made me begin to ponder the moral implications of living during this horrific Iraq saga. Have we become what the Germans were during WWII – at best complacent, and at worst participants?

Mission Accomplished

Sure, there are people out there who would agree with Todenhofer’s bounty.

Jim Horn at the Schools Matter blog asks if anyone at the Obama Administration will step up to the plate after The Raw Story reported four dozen detainees killed during or after their interrogations (warning: the Raw Story article contains one of those awful photos).

And the group National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance has demanded the Bush administration “be held accountable” (i.e. indicted) for what Just Foreign Policy estimates to be 1,320,110 civilian Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the invasion (a much higher number than most news sources would ever report).

But what about the people of the US, and the other countries who have sent soldiers to fight? That’s a whole lot of deaths on our watch, with no end in sight.

A Look In The Mirror

No, there are no concentration camps (though Gitmo may come in a close second), or a Fascist leader (though Cheney is beginning to look as if he deserves an eye patch).

Yet there is an entire culture of people being killed, mutilated, losing loved ones, and being singled out for discrimination when in other parts of the world. As House Democrat Charles Rangel said in a 2005 interview:

This is just as bad as six million Jews being killed. The whole world knew it and they were quiet about it, because it wasn’t their ox that was being gored.

Many of us carry on our lives as if nothing is happening, because what can we do? I wonder if the Germans asked themselves the same question.

Do you think the moral implications of the Iraqi massacre are the same for US citizens as the Holocaust was for the Germans? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: War President / Joe Wezorek

About The Author

Christine Garvin

Christine Garvin is a certified Nutrition Educator and holds a MA in Holistic Health Education. She is the founder/editor of Living Holistically...with a sense of humor and co-founder of Confronting Love. When she is not out traveling the world, she is busy writing, doing yoga, and performing hip-hop and bhangra. She also likes to pretend living in her hippie town of Fairfax, CA is like being on vacation.

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http://ExileLifestyle.com Colin Wright

A very good point, and a very hard to swallow (but probably correct) correlation that is drawn here.

I always hated making excuses to foreign friends who couldn’t understand how I could let Bush be elected twice. “I didn’t vote for him!” I would say, but they still seemed to think that I was personally responsible.

And I guess, in a way, I was. There’s always something more that can be done, I suppose.
http://www.ianmack.com Ian MacKenzie

While I think the acts of the Bush gov are absolutely criminal, I find any references to Hitler to be counter-productive.

It’s far too easy to say “Bush didn’t kill 6 million Jews! He’s not even close to Hilter!” Also, Hitler has become a cliched archetype, he’s usually invoked in heated discussions that aren’t going anywhere.

Godwin’s Law states that “As a [web] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Meaning there’s no point arguing any further.

DHarbecke

The Mythic Evil defense is ironclad. “Sure, my client blew up a school bus… but he’s not as bad as Hitler.” These days, you have to be really shocked into outrage to get people involved…

DHarbecke

The Germans had a legitimate defense: many of them didn’t know all that was going on. We did. But if we can ignore our consciences just one more day by shooting up with “American Idol,” everything will go away. Problem is, it doesn’t.

The whole thing stank from the beginning, and all we’re doing now is getting used to the smell. Instead of doing what’s right, people are doing the same thing as when it was happening: “Oh, well… too hard to change it, we’re just little people, what can you do…” But you can’t just walk away from this and say “oops.” It will always be there, a national shame that will hang around our necks for years and years to come.

Bush, Cheney and the lot of ‘em should be prosecuted for war crimes, or all this “justice” we supposedly stand for means nothing. I always said this war will end in the courts. Until it does, it won’t end.

DHarbecke

Yikes! I didn’t mean to say the Germans were excused from what happened! What Eva said about not living in a free country was better phrased. Sorry! Delete delete delete…

http://evaholland.com Eva

I don’t think the German comparison works here, for a number of reasons but perhaps most importantly — as far as the concept of collective guilt goes — because the citizens in Hitler’s Germany were not living in a free society.

“Complacency” isn’t the right word, I don’t think, for most of their various reactions. Some wholly supported Hitler’s war. Some were ignorant, to varying degrees, of its fullest consequences. Some risked their lives to stop it. Some did nothing out of fear for their lives. And yes, some buried their heads in the metaphorical sand and pretended none of it was happening around them. American reactions are just as varied, but the context is worlds away. There is no Bush-Cheney equivalent to Kristallnacht, the Night of the Long Knives, the Reichstag Fire, etc. The last eight years have certainly seen a lot of violence and death in the administration’s name, but it’s been directed solely at foreigners. There hasn’t been an internal, violent purge of American opposition. Americans have had nothing to fear, really.

This is neither to excuse German citizens in the Nazi era or to condemn Americans in the Bush era — I just think they’re two completely separate discussions.

christine

Eva, that’s a really good point about how we haven’t had anything happen to the people of this country and rather it has happened “out there,” where we don’t have to see it face to face. That makes a vast difference.

Though I do have to say even though it didn’t happen outwardly to US citizens (for the most part) I did have a friend who was married to a Muslim that almost got deported in the year after 9/11. Many of his friends, men that certainly loved being in America a whole lot more than the country they came from, sat in truly scary confined places for long periods of time. They were not able to contact their families, lawyers, etc. and then were just poof! gone–deported–and they had lived here for 20 years legally, though not as citizens.

ZtHomas

I once read that the only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.
Partly true although I do not believe most of the evil doing was Bush’s, but others like Cheney who are behind the curtain controlling things.

And as for the are we letting it happen idea, you can blame every politician who let Bush continue on with these things just as much as you can blame Bush himself – that even means the Obama administration, for they have not gotten out of Iraq or closed the torture centers. I believe Noam Chomsky said something similar to that if we were to follow the Nuremberg trials all of the presidents from WWII on would be tried and hanged.

http://evaholland.com Eva

This is sort of a quibble (although really, it’s a widely-held perception that I think affects people’s willingness to judge everyone in Germany) but Hitler was appointed, not elected, as Chancellor. His party won a number of seats by election, but not a majority. I believe they only ever received about a third of the popular vote.

Beyond that, despite being throughly anti-Iraq War, anti-torture and anti-Bush, I do object to the idea that Bush and Hitler are equivalent figures. I think that Hitler was worse on almost every measurable level: maliciousness of intent (deliberately setting out to exterminate an entire segment of the earth’s population), means or methods, sheer body count (obviously), and on and on.

http://thelonglayover.blogspot.com Carlo Alcos

I wonder if he really believes that or is just using Hitler’s name for shock value. As Andrew said, there are other people in the world who are more deserving of the comparison to Hitler.
That said, if it takes this comparison to shake people up and discuss and learn what’s really going on over there, then it’s done its purpose.

Alex

While I’m still conflicted with the comparison, I do think that Americans are somewhat just as misinformed as Germans were during their era. If you look at Iraqi War media coverage during, especially, the first months of the war, the media was almost scared to cover anything opposing the war. I actually watched a video on the neglect of the media to cover the war correctly. And it only catapulted. Eventually people slowly started to become more informed as more and more information was revealed, yet just recently have bans been lifted on censorship (such as not showing coffins). But I still find that many Americans are completely ignorant of the whole situation from the start. A lot believe that only recently the situations has been messed up. While this doesn’t excuse Americans for being silent, I find that people just don’t know how they can help. Maybe if information was presented to them, they would take the opportunity to do something.

http://www.truequanimity.com/ Christine Garvin

Alex, while I agree that the mainstream war coverage was all very positive toward the war for the first couple of years, the same wasn’t true for “alternative media”–local weeklies, Al Jazeera, etc. were telling it like it was from day one, actually before day one.

I remember going to a picture installation in the small (albeit very progressive) town of Arcata, CA before the US invasion of Iraq, where there were pictures of places bombed and limbless or missing-an-eye/starving children in Iraq due to both the sanctions the US had inflicted and the bombs dropped since Bush 1 and the Gulf War.

To some extent, the time that we are living in, with access to global news at our fingertips, makes us more responsible than any previous generation. Yes, there is a lot of misguided sources out there, but there is also the ability for the little person who has been directly affected to get his story out there. And it is up to us to listen.

http://collazoprojects.com Julie

Agreed– the comparison doesn’t work for me, but I do think it’s worth asking whether Americans have become way too complacent about the war (not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, too).
Andrew

“Have we become what the Germans were during WWII – at best complacent, and at worst participants?”

I think it’s important to note that Saddam was wiping out entire groups of people just because they weren’t like him. So if I had to compare someone to Hitler, I’m pretty sure I’d choose him over Bush any day.

It doesn’t justify everything Bush and his regime did, but let’s not get carried away here. We’re not gathering up Iraqis in box cars and shipping them off to Auschwitz.

christine

No, but in the 3 years following 9/11, we certainly “detained” (threw in sometimes horrific jails with no access to family or friends) and deported a whole lot of innocent Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent that weren’t even Muslim.

And yes, I personally witnessed quite a few get harassed by police at BART stations in San Francisco, and we know how progressive SF is supposed to be.

http://thelonglayover.blogspot.com Carlo Alcos

Sorry…this comment wasn’t a reply to Eva, my bad,,,when I say “he” I mean Dr Jurgen Todenhofer:

I wonder if he really believes that or is just using Hitler’s name for shock value. As Andrew said, there are other people in the world who are more deserving of the comparison to Hitler.
That said, if it takes this comparison to shake people up and discuss and learn what’s really going on over there, then it’s done its purpose.
Jacob Bielanski

I’m not sure if I agree with Todenhofer’s “Hitler” comparison, but his book (free, online) “Why Do You Kill, Zaid” is really fascinating.

Frankly, I’ve been hoping that Bush would be court martial’d and shot for his other abomination: No Child Left Behind.

Andrew brings up a good point though–the same pretenses under which we should hang Bush (for the Iraq war) apply even MORE SO to going in, arresting and hanging Saddam Hussein (which, if memory serves, we did). Sure, if we had never gone there, we could’ve maintained a moral high ground (something we desperately need these days), but how many dead and starving would there be on Saddam’s hands?

Lets not forget, the U.N. didn’t impose those sanctions for the hell of it.

Of course, under this reasoning, we should also have some ACUs in Darfur…South Ossetia….North Korea…Myanmar…etc., etc.
Ginger, American in Italy

Well I agree with Todenhofer.
We impeach a president for a 3 minute zipper weakness which did absolutely no harm to anyone… and yet turn a blind eye to cronyism, greed, ignoring of the Geneva convention, graft, murder and maiming of thousands in the name of ‘Democracy’ which was the alternative word for…. crude oil. Doesn’t anyone else see something decidedly very wrong with this picture??? Have 8 years of a sick administration made us so jaded and blase’…that we can’t grasp the difference in the offense-s?
I personally am still disgusted…. ohh and by the way, where the hell IS Bin Laden?
http://www.getatrip.com Get A Trip

Is Dr. Jurgen for real. Not Going To Happen. Then again, that’s why he can boldly offer a million bucks up. His offer is therefore meaningless. If people knew how important it is for us to have bases in the Middle East then they would not question why we are there. They might not like to hear the truth, but as an American I support our troops in Iraq. We need to be there.

Bounty On Bush: Are Americans Still In Denial About The Iraq War?

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