By: Mary Mostert
October 9, 2002
After his trip to Baghdad, Rep. James McDermott (D-Washington) said on ABC's "This Week", "I think the president would mislead the American people."
Rep. David Bonior (D-MI) who also went to Baghdad, blamed the United States, not Saddam Hussein who invaded Kuwait, starting a war that he lost, for Iraq's current social problems. McDermott also would block President Bush's drive to force Saddam Hussein to abide by UN Resolutions. He said, "I think you have to take Iraqis on their face value. We don't have to pass a resolution in the Congress or in the Security Council right now."
Back in another war, in the 1940s, that was called collaborating with the enemy and those who did it ended any respect or usefulness they once enjoyed. Just ask the family of Charles Lindbergh, one of America's greatest heroes in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1936 after Lindbergh and his wife, Ann Morrow, toured Nazi Germany, he wrote in his Autobiography of Values: "The organized vitality of Germany was what most impressed me: the unceasing activity of the people, and the convinced dictatorial direction to create the new factories, airfields, and research laboratories."
In October 1938 Lindbergh was awarded the Service Cross of the German Eagle by Hitler's second in command and head of the German Luftwaffe Hermann Goering, on behalf of Adolf Hitler.
Two weeks later, Lindbergh delivered his first nationwide radio address in which he urged America to remain neutral. In the speech he criticized President Roosevelt, who believed the Nazis must be stopped in their conquest of Europe. Lindbergh saw a Nazi victory as certain and thought America's attention should be placed elsewhere. "These wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder... This is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion." Building on his belief that "racial strength is vital," Lindbergh published an article in Reader's Digest stating, "That our civilization depends on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back... the infiltration of inferior blood."
Inferior blood? Dictatorial direction to create the new factories? Lindbergh was openly spouting Adolf Hitler's theories of racial purity and National Socialism while saying that he just "wanted peace." General Friedrich von Boetticher, Germany's military attache˘ in Washington, considered Lindbergh a friend of Hitler's cause against the Jews. In fact, as late as September 11, 1941, less than three months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he gave a speech charging that "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration" were trying to "draw the US into World War II."
Because of people like Lindbergh, Adolf Hitler and the militarists of Japan, had every reason to believe that America was too weak and too cowardly to ever put up a fight. An estimated 40% of the college youth of America in 1941 had signed the American version of Britain's "Oxford Pledge" which stated that they would refuse to go to war even if their governments drafted them and sent them to war.
As a result of the anti-war movements of the 1930s, America was not ready for war in 1941. Congress at the time was controlled by a group of Democrats who were soul mates of Charles Lindbergh. As I pointed out a year ago, "It was OK for President Roosevelt to ask Japan to stop invading its neighbors … but it was not OK for him to threaten to DO anything about it if the Japanese government ignored his requests. By attacking Pearl Harbor, it was believed, and crippling America's Pacific fleet, Japan would have time to seize the Philippines, Guam, Midway and what is now Vietnam before the bumbling, unprepared Americans could do anything about it.". We are in almost exactly the same situation today. It's OK with the collaborators if President Bush politely ASKS Saddam Hussein to stop stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, but not OK if he takes any action to make him stop stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the signers of the Oxford Pledge changed their minds after Germany's ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor. To his credit, even Lindbergh tried to re-enlist after Pearl Harbor, eight months after resigning his U.S. Air Force Reserve Commission. President Roosevelt would not approve his reenlistment saying that a man who thought we were "defeated before we even started to fight was not fit to lead men to battle."
On September 11, 2001, America was attacked and more people were killed than on December 7, 1941. Yet, we still have an alarming number of collaborators, like Rep. McDermott and David Bonior, in public office who haven't understood the message of the terrorists. They seem to have forgotten that over 30 million people died in World War II and that with weapons of mass destruction in the hands of dictators like Saddam Hussein, 30 million dead could be a drop in the bucket in the next war. Devastated American cities could well be the price we pay for electing collaborators of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to Congress.
It seems to me that the coming November congressional elections would be a good time for voters to start cleaning both the Senate and the House of Representatives of Saddam collaborators.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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