The Shape of Days

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Fake but accurate quote

“I’ve been to Auschwitz, Dacahu and Buchenwald, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together.”

Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Charlie Rangel, the Democratic Congressman from Harlem, is a distinguished public servant who has represented his constituents in Washington for more than thirty years. He has been a legislator since 1966, six years before I was born. He earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service in the Korean War. He co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus. He has done important work toward calling attention to the racist policies of South Africa and the Islamic genocide going on in Sudan. He is an honored member of our government, and we are lucky to have him.

It’s a pity he’s become a stark, raving lunatic.

On Monday morning, during a radio appearance on WWRL-AM, Rep. Rangel described the invasion of Iraq as “the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country.” He went on to say that it’s “just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed.”

Radio-show host Steve Malzberg gave Rangel a chance to back down from what was clearly an unjustifiable and thoughtless remark. Rangel did, slightly, saying, “People’s silence when they know terrible things are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust.”

It’s unclear whose silence the distinguished gentleman from New York was referring to. Columnists and pundits on the left side of the political spectrum have been comparing President Bush to Hitler for years. Cartoonist Ted Rall went so far as to compare 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire in January 2004. Former UN official Scott Ritter said in May 2003, “I see no difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Poland.” And of course, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill called the victims of the September 11 attacks “little Eichmanns” and described the American people as “good Germans.” Our prisons are gulags, our leaders are architects of terror. It seems like our elected administration and the American people have been slandered more regularly and with more vituperation in the past four years than we were in the entirety of the 20th century.

Apart from the superficial foolishness of Rep. Rangel’s remarks, there’s an underlying irony here that chills the blood when you think about it. Saddam Hussein was both a vocal supporter and a financial backer of the Arab campaign of terrorist murder against Israeli Jews. On March 13, 2003, just days before our President delivered his final ultimatum to Saddam, the AP reported that the Iraqi tyrant gave a check for the equivalent of US$10,000 to the family of a Hamas suicide bomber. That same day, the BBC reported that the family of another murderer received $25,000. A year earlier, in March 2002, a Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald reporter wrote about a round of payoffs in which the families of two murder-bombers received $25,000 each and the families of forty-five other “martyrs” were rewarded with checks for $10,000 each. According to the BBC, Saddam funneled some $35 million into the pockets of the families of murderers and terrorists between 2000 and 2003.

Saddam Hussein was buying his own Holocaust, right out there in the open. Where was Charlie Rangel then? Where were the Americans who even today are so quick to accuse their countrymen of being complicit in genocide? If these people are so concerned about Holocausts, why weren’t they calling on the Bush administration to send troops to Baghdad to stop the one that was going on right in front of them?

Reasonable people can be opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Simply being opposed to the invasion of Iraq does not, in and of itself, make you a crazy person. But those who opposed the invasion need to drop the Nazi-Hitler-Holocaust hyperbole. It’s just making them look even more self-obsessed and pathologically narcissistic than usual.

Other reax around the ’sphere from Michelle and Lorie and Arthur and Daniel.

• More on the Eason Jordan story
• Peggy Noonan nails it
• How our experiences change us