Friday, November 2, 2007
By Edgar P. Sousé
“Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.”
No, those words were not spoken by Stephen Walt or John Mearsheimer, the authors of the recent, controversial book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” – although they certainly could have been written by them.
They were spoken by Charles A. Lindbergh on September 11, 1941 in Des Moines Iowa for an America First rally, an organization committed to keeping America from going to war with Hitler. So great was the public reaction to this speech, that hundreds of newspapers denounced him in spite of his canonization for his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic and his name was even removed from the water tower in his home town of Little Falls, Minnesota.
Nor did Lucky Lindy back down from his philipics against the Roosevelt administration. Later that year, in front of an adoring crowd of 20,000 America Firsters in Madison Square Garden, he attacked the President, accusing him of leading the country into war through “subterfuge.”
“There is no danger to this nation from without”, he declared, “Our only danger lies from within.” And you didn’t have to look far to see that the group “agitating” for war was The Jewish Lobby. And all the time, Lindy punctuated his screeds with denials of anti-Semitism.
At the same New York rally in 1941, John Cudahy, former United States Ambassador to Belgium and staunch America First Committee leader, supplied the antidote to these “agitators” who were working against America’s national interest. What was necessary, he stated, was engagement. He called for an immediate peace conference with Herr Hitler, referring to the Fuhrer as “a passing phase.” Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Democratic senator from Montana, and another staunch supporter of America First, railed against the President claiming that American generals had “even set the date for American entry into the war.”
If all this sounds more than a bit familiar, it is. With a bit of character substitution you have the dictionary definition of “La plus ca change…” Lindbergh becomes Walt and Mearsheimer and Senator Wheeler easily morphs into Sy Hersh of The New Yorker with his Nostradamus like predictions of the date set for the Bush administration’s launching of the war against Iran.
A further Lindbergh quote from his Iowa speech fits the bill for Walt and Mearsheimer:
“The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war…Before long, lecture halls that were open to the advocates of war were closed to speakers who opposed it. A fear campaign was inaugurated. We are on the verge of war, but it is not yet too late to stay out. It is not too late to show that no amount of money, or propaganda, or patronage can force a free and independent people into war against its will. "
But perhaps most chilling of all these comparisons is Walt and Mearsheimer’s sanitization of the existential threat against Israel from the mouth of the madman of Tehran. According to the tag team, Ahmadinejad’s words, sandwiched in between a Holocaust denial “conference” and the announcement of the installation of 3,000 centrifuges for producing fissionable material, were “mistranslated.” It was a simple misunderstanding. You see, in Farsi, “Wipe Israel off the map” was really “Israel shall disappear from the pages of time.” What a relief to hear the accurate translation. What on earth was I worried about?
Incidentally, neither Walt nor Mearsheimer understands Farsi.
I want to end with one more quote.
"Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
This one is not the product of The America First Committee. It was delivered at about the same time, however, as the Lindbergh speech.
And many would subsequently claim that Hitler’s original words in German were mistranslated.
Readers may be interested in this original document [document from CharlesLindbergh.com] on Lindbergh by Leon M. Birkhead's Friends of Democracy. Birkhead was a Unitarian Universalist. How times have changed.
Great, GREAT post! We have obviously learned nothing from history, except that maybe the number of self-hating Jews has increased.
BHG