The Decider's incisive history lesson du jour:
"History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake," the president said. "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?"
I agree with the first sentence, so let's pay attention to Bush's words here.
Re: the analogy with Lenin and Hitler:
Lenin and Hitler ruled world powers and commanded some of history's largest armies.
Bin Laden rules a cave and commands suicidal year-abroad students.
Lenin and Hitler: killed tens of millions of people, maybe even 100,000,000.
Bin Laden: Al-Qaeda has killed maybe 10,000 people (a generous estimate). (I won't include Iraqi deaths, since somebody else started that war.)
While Bin Laden's a threat, is he Hitler or Lenin? No. Milosevic was a far closer analogy, or the current Khartoum regime.
P.S.:
When we fought Hitler, we fought Hitler. We didn't invade Spain and say we were fighting Hitler.
Oh, and John Kerry said yesterday:
"If President Bush had unleashed the American military to do the job at Tora Bora four years ago and killed Osama bin Laden, he wouldn't have to quote this barbarian's words today. Because President Bush lost focus on the killers who attacked us and instead launched a disastrous war in Iraq, today Osama bin Laden and his henchmen still find sanctuary in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they still plot attacks against America."
Memo to Senator Kerry: maybe you should've said that a bit more forcefully two years ago.
