All the President's Nazis (Real and Imagined): An Open Letter to Bush

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!

The All-American Nazi

Your family's fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.

Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.

--snip--

Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.

Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Oh, but there is much more too:

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.

The All American Traitor

Your family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.

Grandpa Bush -- that is to say, your grandfather -- wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American

In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.

Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.

Iraq is your Poland

Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.

I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq -- based on lies -- is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq:

"...Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany's war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.

My grandfather's sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.

Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler's ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists -- something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler's lies even have the same purpose.

When you, Mr. Bush, said "see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," were you aware of Adolf Hitler's eerily similar statement? Hitler said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."

Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.

Your very own concentration camps

You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.

We don't know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.

In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don't know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don't know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.

What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:

"We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building," Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. "It was this huge circular thing. We just didn't know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew -- bodies." Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. "It had bones in it," he said, and he called it the crematorium. "But hey, you're at war," he said. "Suck it up or drive on."

What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.

Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won't work. It never has and it certainly won't work now. We know far too much about you and yours.

I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won't. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.

Yes, you are an anti-Semite

Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

Follow Larisa Alexandrovna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larisa_a

Comments

[NightRider]

"I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation."

70% of the American public feels the same way. Thank you. Well said.

[Jan6]

Reporters for the networks and newspapers are paid quite a bit. Have they all been covering Bush for 7 years without bothering to learn his history? Why are they being paid so well to just handle press releases given to them and not look further? His father was vice- president and then president for 12 years and this should have come out then at the very latest. Why is this ignored? What do reporters and journalists think their job is. This is the kind of information that should be debated, exposed and worked over completely as part of their job. I am incredulous!
Thanks for the post and I will look for more things you have written.

[ceti]

Great commentary -- points out the undeniable hypocrisy, if not inversion of reality at the heart of the Bush administration's propaganda. They have committed the supreme international crime when American tanks roled into Iraq.

The real appeasers are the Democrats who vote to authorize the war, and the cowards in the corporate media who cheerleaded it every step of the way.

Reminds me of Otto Wels who led the socialists to cast the only vote against Hitler's Enabling Act in 1933 (the communists were already jailed at this point). He looked directly at Hitler and said "you can take our lives and you can take our freedom, but you cannot take our honor." This took a lot of guts when the Opera House was surrounded by jeering blackshirted Nazi stormtroopers who openly chanted of fire and murder for those who voted No. Those in the media who similarly stood up to the Limbaughs, O'Reillys, Hannitys, and all the other fascist bullies who inhabit the media landscape, are likewise heroes.

[regis18]

Read your biography (autobiography?) on Raw Story. We should all be so batty from our meds.
Your article in Huff Post is a profound indictment of the fools of this administration. If volunteers are needed to assist in their prosecution, I hope I can get to the front of the line.

[gwingert]

Wow!!! How very powerful and profound.

[deepseas]

Ms. Alexandrovna --

You are truly a gift to truth and courage. Hopefully this article will get massive dissemination to Americans who sorely need the truth to hit them in the head. Your tragic personal story together with the historical transgressions of the Bush family will greatly help to put Bush's legacy into perspective.

How Americans have tolerated this treasonous war criminal for this long says much about the ignorance, arrogance and cowardice of this country. Before more damage can be done, we must remove this man from office and put him in chains to await his fate.

[nellie]

I wonder if this information will spread to the mainstream television news outlets and the NY Times and the LA Times and the Washington Post the way Mayhill Fowler's silly blog about Obama's "bitter" remark did.

HuffPo, I would call this front-page worthy.

[kristin]

I emailed the article to a columnist at the Boston Globe, a local newspaper for me.
I said I hoped she could use the article as the basis for a column.

Please contact any one you know, etc. to help get this information into the MSM.

However, I have a feeling they all know this information, but are not about to put it in the MSM.

[Skyhawk]

This is truly one of the best posts I've read in a while. Larisa you're beautiful. This is what HuffPo is all about.

[DLSteinhardt]

Absolutely brilliant.

Does HuffPo make Pulitzer nominations for commentary? This nails current history better than anything else I've read in years.

If only we could see this on the main page!

!

[midtown]

CRITICAL:

Read these two links, and pass them along. We must stop this.

"Bush Birthday Gift to Israel: WAR" by M.J. Rosenberg
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/15/bush_birthday_gift_to_israel_w/#more

And Todd Gitlin: "Iran: What's the Game?"
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/14/iran_whats_the_game/

If this happens, I concur with these authors, we are doomed.

[RTIII]

Thank you Larisa.

Ironic, isn't it, that at this particular moment in history, a foreign-born journalist is more patriotic than just about every single native born American journalist? I continue my admiration of you and your work. I hope to meet you, in person. ...This particular work was (as usual) very well written.

I know you will keep up the good work. Some of us are keeping up the good fight. Wherever I can, "I've got your back." I wish I had the time to join you in your research and publishing for we need more people working on these vital subjects..­.

With admiration and respect,
Richard

P.S. You are the only "Blogger I like" (enough to click the button) here on HufPo as you are the only one who consistently speaks on topics of vital importance­... RT

[MichaelGeneSullivan]

Thank you for posting an fact-filled, historical piece. I'm so tired of the mindless Bush bashing that is just the typed version of sticking one's tongue out. You've written a useful weapon.

[MoniqueF]

You go Larisa! Great passion in delivering the truth!
I have said over and over and again that since Bush TOOK power, America has become a dry-drunk country ( follow the leader???) . Not only the denial in facing the lies, abuses and crimes of this president of ours is outraging but the hypcrisy from those who know better to applaud every word coming out of his mouth just because he is the "president" makes me want to vomit! While the position of being president of the United Srtates is a respectable position, there is nothing to respect in this president's behavior. Just think that November is in 6 months and that Bush has plenty of time to bring more destruction. This mad man has to be stopped!

[Eckfan]

Thank you so much for this article. I can feel your hurt, pain and anger in every word. If only every American felt the same. Just imagine if the treasonous Prescott had been held accountable for his crimes. What a different world we would be living in now. Instead, history was doomed to repeat itself because of the ignorance and laziness of Americans. Welcome to fascist America. Your grandfather must be very proud Dumbya.

[littlemanintheboat]

They don't use crematoriums much anymore. Too much evidence, smoke, expense and whatnot.
Could Haliburton and Blackwater have made orders for these?:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/09/AR2008050902167.html

[suescannon]

CREMATORIUMS?????

WHAT...???

Bush and Cheney, YOU ARE FIRED!

Why are we not outraged? Why have we not impeached these criminals?

[castrochavez08]

Because the Democrats have protected Bush from impeachment.