The Iraqis have to come down hard on the Baath holdouts, the common criminals who are terrorists-for-hire, and Sunnis who collaborate with the foreign jihadi murderers coming through Syria.

Perhaps the americans need to concentrate on borders and acting as rapid reaction force backup to Iraqis, and let the Iraqis off the leash to deal with the problem their own way.

A lot of Sunni arabs apparently need to die before Iraq can find peace and freedom.

"General John Abazaid notes that he can find more confidence in the Iraq mission in Iraq than in Washington."

Actually I'd say Washington would be the best place to find confidence.

Wow! Iraqis (or at least those in the green zone likely to come in contact with the good general) are more likely to support tossing another 200 billion and 1700 plus American kids into their little democracy experiment than Americans.

Who'd have thunk it?

Or who would be delusional enough at this point to ignore it?

Guess you've answered that eh?

Davebo:

You're being pessimistic. Clearly, the insurgency is in its death throes. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Our valiant Iraqi allies are gearing up for the final blow against the last holdouts of the old regime.

We have turned the corner in Iraq.

Um, is there a sort of new year's festival in Mesopotamia coming up? Sure hope not.

Dr Sanity Paranoia Without Bounds

Leading Egyptian Government Daily Al-Akhbar: Al-Zarqawi is an American Agent

All the evidence proves that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is working for America, because his victims are Iraqis and not [members of] the coalition forces under the command of the American occupation forces in Iraq. Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's official title is 'leader of Al-Qa'ida's faction in Iraq.' Osama bin Laden is the commander of the Al-Qa'ida organization, and this proves that [Al-Zarqawi's commander,] bin Laden, has [also] been an American agent ever since he operated against the USSR forces in Afghanistan in favor of the Americans

Dr Sanity

Psychologically, it is very difficult to abandon a delusion, particularly when that delusion serves the purpose of accounting for an unacceptable status quo. For too long the so-called leaders in the Middle East have --in a manner similar to Jim Jones--been quenching the thirst of their people with poisoned Kool Aid.

They have made it easy to believe that all their problems and troubles are caused by the infidel Americans or Jews. The delusion is crucial to their identity as individuals and as nations--otherwise it would be necessary to look inside their own hearts and souls for the underlying causes of their political, economic and spiritual stagnation.

This is the nature of projection and paranoia. The unacceptable thoughts or feelings are denied ("not owned") by the person experiencing them, and instead are projected onto another individual or--as in this case--a group (racism, anti-semitism etc. are all projections).

Thus, the person who originally had the offensive thought or feeling becomes the helpless victim of the evil "other" and they do not have to cope with the fact that the evil lies within themselves.

Projection as a psychological defense mechanism can eventually lead to full-blown paranoia, where--even to the most casual of observers--the delusion (or projection) is completely out of touch with reality.

Many of the Muslims and nations of the Middle East (and elsewhere) have completely lost touch with reality.

Large swaths of the left are in the same pickle

She continues in Undermining the Will to Win

I am not claiming that there aren't challenges--especially in the asymetrical type of war we are fighting--but the truth is that there is no way we can lose this war on the actual battlefield.

This has been said over an over again by those who know and understand military operations. The question is do we have the will to win it? And that question brings me to what the Left does best. Chipping away at America's will to win.

It has been easy to do this. We have just had a week of unmitigated, calculated, and irresponsible belittlement of America's motives, behavior, and morality. Our military has been compared to Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Our "loyal" opposition wants to get even for the Clinton years and stages a mock impeachment of the President during a war.

Some members of Congress are calling for a resolution that would ask the President to come up with a specific timetable for withdrawal from Iraq--without a thought to the impact such a timetable would have improving the morale of the "insurgents" they seem to dearly love; while once again making soldiers in the field believe that there is little or no support for their valiant efforts.

I've just about had it with this kind of adolescent, irresponsible, and frankly psychotic behavior on the part of the Democratic party. They have lost all perspective and don't seem to care that they bear considerable responsibility for ripping the fabric of this society by their incessant, whining and power-hungry grabs for power.

In the thread A Democrat's Military Reform Package my comment 55

Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.

But the left hate Arab Liberals, .. , American commie Liberals are not Liberals .. they are anti-Liberals .. George Orwell wrote about their total inversion, perversity is normalcy, debauchery is virtue, theft is "Social Justice" and leftist Opression is "Liberation".

Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture.

Dead on ..

Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.

Dr Sanity, Separated at Birth adds.

The Left and the remnants of the failed ideologies they worship, are the psychological siblings of the terrorists, separated at birth, but brought together again by their mutual delight in destroying Liberty, Democracy and the values of Western Civilization.

Anyone who remains in the Democratic Party today must face the reality that the party has aligned itself firmly with those who would love to destroy the U.S.; and each person must take responsibility for that.

It is not too late for someone--practically anyone--in the ranks of the Democrats to step forward and offer some constructive criticism of the War on Terror (all rational people would welcome that as a change of pace, if for no other reason).

But, until someone does, the frantic and hysterical undermining of our military and the will of the American people makes the Democrats stand squarely in the camps of the enemy.

Senator Durbin deserves more than censure

When Commie traitor John Kerry went to Paris to get orders from his %5 Death Quota Murdering Veitmihn he loved as "George Washington" with the CPUSA, here is one of the many projects he and his commie comrades came home with.

Acting on a request from the North Vietnamese, students in a so-called anti-war organization in the United States researched public records and formulated biographies on Americans captured in Vietnam.

After reading Lt. Rowe's biography, his Viet Cong captors became furious. They marched him into a cramped bamboo hut and forced him to sit on the damp clay floor. Several high ranking Viet Cong officials were staring down at Lt. Rowe. They held out a piece of typed onion skin paper.

"The peace and justice loving friends, of the National Liberation Front, who live in America, (John Kerry and crew) have provided us with information which leads us to believe you have lied to us,"

they informed Lt. Rowe. "According to what we know, you are not an engineer . . . you have much military experience which you deny . . . You were an officer of the American Special Forces."

Lt. Rowe sat dumbfounded, unable to comprehend that his own people would betray him. He felt it was over. He had lied to the communists for five years. Worse in their eyes, the Viet Cong had believed him. They had lost face and, for that, he would be punished. Soon after, the Viet Cong Central Committee for the National Liberation Front sent orders to Rowe's camp ordering the cadre to execute the uncooperative American prisoner.

If there still existed a sense of right and wrong, those american students should have been shot as traitors, life sentences at least, with John Kerry being one of the first.

Point is, the left is doing it again, the leftist media, is doing it again.

This time, however, more know what they are doing, we know what evil creatures they are.

Listen close to the accusations of the left, because its all projection, and perfectly describes everything they themselves are guilty of.

Their modus operandi has not changed.

It is not too late for someone--practically anyone--in the ranks of the Democrats to step forward and offer some constructive criticism of the War on Terror (all rational people would welcome that as a change of pace, if for no other reason).

Okay, Raymond. Perhaps you might enlighten us how that particular task might be accomplished.

So far, any Democrat who wishes to timidly offer the tiniest tidbit of "constructive criticism" is condemned by you as the moral equivalent of either a) Hitler, b) Stalin, or c) Pol Pot.

Let's get down to brass tacks. Say a Democrat (nervously tugging at his forelock to his patriotic Republican liege lords) wants to offer, however timidly, that perhaps, in an ideal world, Donald Rumsfeld may not have been the best choice for Secretary of Defense. What with Rumsfeld's plan to invade Iraq with a few hundred thousand too few men, and all. And then the firing of the Iraqi Army, you know.

So how would you suggest said Vichy Democrat offer said criticism without being tagged by Mr. Raymond as a Nazi sellout collaborationist Stalinist pinko moonbat defeatist? What is the secret code?

davebo (#2)

...to support tossing another 200 billion and 1700 plus American kids into their little democracy experiment than Americans.

The victims on 9/11 were +3000, and with Iraq in the hands of those fanatics in the next attack they might use something worse than an airliner.

Raymond (#4)

All the evidence proves that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is working for America, because his victims are Iraqis

It is a constant in integrism to attack moderate Muslims when no other targets are available, and it has always helped in containing it. Rumsfeld strategy is right. This Jihad will never be won fighting in Manhattan.

Well for example non Commie Zell Miller, he is after all, a Marine. his opinion would be valued.

We got some constructive criticism from the late Col Hackworth, who agree or disagree, there is no question of his motives or intent.

He certainly did so without undermine of the mission or sliming his country, or spouting tinfoil hat feverswamp nonsense.

He wasnt a clear anti-american leftist spounting the same platitudes we have heard since Walter Durranty.

You can look to the republicans during the kosovo war as to how to behave .. they are not anti american ingrates either, once we had military in harms way, they became part of the team working for american success, the time for carping, and before the war started they carped plenty, was over.

But then again, there are differences between you and us. as the entire history of america and the leftist ememy that embraced crimes agaist humanity thereby convicting themselves as evil incarnate right along with the butchers they embraced ...

If there was a decent democrat they would have denounced Bagdad McDermot .. standing on mass graves of kids to denounce the united states in support of a regime of crimes against humanity.

Where is the condemnation of Durbin from the democrats in office ? (crickets)

Frankly, im with Dr Sanity, the commie crats have gone insane, lost the plot, mental disorder. Or they are the same commie creatures that doomed S Veitnam by refusing them arms and spare parts long after the US troops had left, so that a regime of communist crimes against humanity could bring south their horror that would butcher a million in gulags and another half million drowning in the south china sea attempting to escape.

I doubt they know how to argue the merits of the project without trashing the country with their fake charges tinfoil hat fever swamp conspiracy theories

As for you, you remind me of mr backwards, everything you say, the reality is opposite, like some programed nuronic inverter, perhaps you could restrict your argument to this dimension.

Wretchard

What we are witnessing is a race between the force-generation capabilities of two sides. Materially speaking, the enemy is bound to lose. Al Qaeda is openly rushing every available fighter into Iraq.

But millions of Iraqis Sunnis, Kurds and Shi'ites who have no intention of being resubjugated, fueled by the oil wealth of Iraq can be counted on to resist them, supported by the most deadly military force in the world. On the face of it the enemy cause would be lost.

But in the matter of the will to win the outcome becomes more doubtful. Iraq has become the recruiting focus of a generation of Islamists and Leftists while the United States public has won itself enough temporary safety to forget the dangers of September 11.

The enemy's hunger -- almost desperation for victory -- stands in symbolic contrast to the desire among many Americans to close Gitmo. The war in Iraq has bought American homeland security in the most unexpected of ways. The enemy has learned to refrain from awakening the US giant, the better to defeat him in his sleep.

But the recent knives in the back telegraph to the enemy not to give up. Like John Kerrys treason converting defeat of the communists into victory

Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?

It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

You should read the whole thing, this is deja vu looking at the antics of the left because its the same leftist religion doing it.

Thankfully it might be over before the enemy within can do their damage. well at least that was the case untill certain moronic ingrates sent the enemy messages of hope.

The good side is many know the traitors have no pull and Bush isnt going to listen to them, its Bush whos opinion that counts, and the enemy knows what that is. but as usual its either treason or irresponsibility, I put stock In the former.

Im with the military people, they are kicking ass and taking names as I write, but that dont mean i cannot take notice of the leftist ingrates that share our sanctuary and try to undermine it any way they can.

We have seen this before, and they will pay a price for it this time.

JoeA: Rumsfeld strategy is right. This Jihad will never be won fighting in Manhattan.

Thats Certainly the way the resident Warrior Grim puts it

We are not fighting in a battlespace that includes our own society. The enemy has failed to engage us there effectively, since 9/11. The political sniping between Blue and Red, left and right, is not warfare. It is politics; and I think it is no nastier now than it was in the 1990s.

The same party helping the enemy tho.

As far as the GWOT goes, then, here is the important fact: we are fighting it entirely in the enemy's society. Our own society is not changed by the war; if anything, society is reverting to pre-9/11 mores. In the global war, then, I think we are winning -- and winning big.

Because we are fighting in the enemy's society, there are two possible outcomes: we lose the battle for that society, in which case we must try again at some other opportunity; or he loses, in which case he is destroyed.

And I dont want to start over again, im perfectly happy having the battle in their back yard instead of mine, and im not so certain of the security of mine.

The stakes are huge, which of course, makes the leftist enemy all the more loathsome, they are gonna have to pay an enourmous price for this.

They dont want us as angry as they are, .... no i think we are there already after recent events.

Durbins political Head on a dirty dish will do, or else let him and dean stand before America in sharp rebuke.

I donno, im still fuming over here, everyone I see writing the past few days are fed up, hit the limit. the traitorcrats have lost all pretense to good intentions... what can you say to properly decribe the past few weeks display... scumbags, utter total scumbags, aiding evil and sliming the good and the decent. words are failimg me ...

I donno, im still fuming over here, everyone I see writing the past few days are fed up, hit the limit. the traitorcrats have lost all pretense to good intentions... what can you say to properly decribe the past few weeks display... scumbags, utter total scumbags, aiding evil and sliming the good and the decent. words are failimg me ...

So, you claim that Zell Miller is the only kind of "criticism" a patriot is allowed to offer.

And then you launch into a spittle-flecked rant about how "awful" the last few weeks have been. Yeah, real nasty business that "reality" has proven to be. Too bad the Main Stream Media hasn't kowtowed enough to the mandates of the President in 2005. Reporting mass casualties, total chaos, and flawed strategy is just doing the Ba'athists' bidding. Or something like that. By the way, have we turned the corner in Iraq yet?

Hey, Raymond, can you spell "Dolchstoß"? 'Cause I'm convinced that you'll be using some form of that intellectual crack when our neocon fantasy comes a cropper. Oh, it won't be your sainted President whose strategy was flawed. Oh, no, it'll be some powerless feeb with a TV camera. Preferably a racial minority, though Dan Rather will do in a pinch. Yeah, anybody except the men in power. Can't be blaming them, after all.

But then again, there are differences between you and us. as the entire history of america and the leftist ememy that embraced crimes agaist humanity thereby convicting themselves as evil incarnate right along with the butchers they embraced ...

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Head-Up-His-Metaphor, remind us all who went off to fight the Fascists in the late 1930s. And, who collaborated with them. Who opposed Nazism in the United States before December 10, 1941? Who wanted us to think about America First?

Were the heroic anti-Fascists: a) Liberal Democrats, or b) Conservative Republicans?

Bonus points for correctly identifying which party coddled the Bund

Stickler, opening that history isn't going to be edifying for anybody in America.

The Left's collaboration with Naziism was long and distinguished, and changed only when Germany betrayed its ally the Soviet Union. There was an anti-fascist left, but there was definitely a collaborationist left as well.

And wasn't one of the most famous Nazi-coddlers some guy named Kennedy (Joe, father of JFK)? Why yes.

Actually, "Heroic anti-fascists" were in kind of short supply in the USA until Pearl Harbour. If you wanted to find those in North America, you had to look north to Canada, who was actually fighting on several fronts while you lot left the world to twist in the wind.

Kudos to FDR for Lend-Lease half-measures and finally waking up to reality, but really... try not to get too full of yourselves down there unless you can point to actual achievement. It annoys the rest of us.

And while we're on the subject of history:

"On election day Roosevelt received 27 million votes to Willkie's 22 million, and in the U.S. Electoral College, Roosevelt defeated Willkie 449 to 82.

After the election, Willkie became one of Roosevelt's most unlikely allies. To the chagrin of many in his party, Willkie called for greater national support for controversial Roosevelt initiatives such as the Lend-Lease Act and embarked on a new campaign to awaken America from its isolationist slumber. On July 23, 1941, he urged unlimited aid to the United Kingdom in its struggle against Nazi Germany. That same year he traveled to Britain and the Middle East as Roosevelt's personal representative, and in 1942 visited the USSR and China in the same capacity. In 1943, Willkie wrote One World, a plea for international peacekeeping after the war. Extremely popular, millions of copies of the book sold. The book further reduced the appeal of isolationism in the U.S. Also in 1943, together with Eleanor Roosevelt and other Americans concerned about the mounting threats to peace and democracy, Willkie helped to establish Freedom House."

I seem to recall Willkie's name coming up as a rather unflattering comparison in a certain Senator's recent campaign speech... so it's not like this is obscure.

Joe, Yes, Lauded because Willkie, for the good of the country, did not make a campaign issue of the draft.

Its said that if Willkie had come out agaist the draft, he would have won the election.

Zell Miller

In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.

And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter.

Fitting tribute, and dead on target at the democrats, shrugging off the national interest as secondary to their quest for power.

The VERY thing, being complained about since then before then, and in our faces right now.

I guess this is art imitating life, or something.

So far, any Democrat who wishes to timidly offer the tiniest tidbit of "constructive criticism" is condemned by you as the moral equivalent of either a) Hitler, b) Stalin, or c) Pol Pot.

Citations, please. I can think of at least three groups of people whom have been comparing folks to Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin. And guess what? Strangely, the people being compared were NOT poor Democrats "timidly offering the TINIest bit of constructive crticism"

What a joke.

Little bit of intellectual honesty here before the crack gets under the radar screen:

"Iraqis (or at least those in the green zone likely to come in contact with the good general) are more likely to support tossing another 200 billion and 1700 plus American kids into their little democracy experiment than Americans"

Its not the Iraqis he was talking about, its the American soldiers in Iraq doing the job. You think their opinion on the matter is worth listening to maybe?

Joe A.

I'm well aware of the number of victims in the 9/11 attack. In fact, I walked defiantly through a crowd of over 10,000 on Dam Square in Amsterdam in late Sept. telling everyone I saw they were idiots if they didn't think Afghanistan was going to be invaded.

The subject here is Iraq. And despite you're own delusions, it has nothing to do with 9/11.

But I suspect you aren't interested in such fact based concepts.

"Its not the Iraqis he was talking about, its the American soldiers in Iraq doing the job. You think their opinion on the matter is worth listening to maybe?"

Which ones? The immediate family member of mine currently patrolling the road from the airport to Bagdad or the other immediate family member currently in day 4 of his 15 day leave?

Trust me, you don't want to ask either of them their opinion of this little adventure of yours.

"Which ones? The immediate family member of mine currently patrolling the road from the airport to Bagdad or the other immediate family member currently in day 4 of his 15 day leave?

Trust me, you don't want to ask either of them their opinion of this little adventure of yours."

Wow, there's some nice anecdotal evidence. You think you're the only one that has family over there bub? Some of us dont feel the need to crow it from the rooftops like they have some special voice in this. Some of us dont feel the need to hand propaganda weapons to their enemies via spreading false information. What I hear from Iraq is that as unhappy as they are about being there they are more unhappy that the pinheads back home dont realize how much good they are doing and only hear when something goes Boom. What scares them as much as EIDs is being stabbed in the back by politically motivated frauds back home intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory so they can relive their Vietnam fetish. And I challenge you to go read as many military blogs as you can and tell me that isnt the prevailing view. Not monolithic, out soldiers have minds at least as intelligent and diverse as the rest of us, but the majority believe in what they are doing and are as worried about the idiots back home as the idiots in front of them. Histoy suggests that is a wise concern.

Perhaps we should ask the 70+ % of the military who voted for Bush, then? Hmmmm.....

The Left coddled the Nazis? Where? Was that before, or after the Nazis crushed the KPD and the SPD, and destroyed the trade unions? Jeez, what planet are you people living on?

And this is rich:

And wasn't one of the most famous Nazi-coddlers some guy named Kennedy (Joe, father of JFK)? Why yes.

Did I bring up the Kennedy clan? No. But since you mention it, I could point out another political clan with some baggage: Prescott Bush and Union Banking Corp., which the US Government seized in 1942.

It's got to be difficult living in a world where you're forced to actively deny undisputed historical facts, like say the actual dates of the Spanish Civil War (hint: before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and the American Left's opposition to Fascism in same. But since folks are also convinced that Bush, Rumsfeld, and Co. are actually doing a good job in Iraq - despite all the objective evidence to the contrary, I guess it's not surprising.

"It's got to be difficult living in a world where you're forced to actively deny undisputed historical facts"

Like whether nazis tortured people with Christina Agulera?

The Left coddled the Nazis? Where?

stickler,

Thanks for proving my point, and conceding it re: Joe Kennedy.

There were some real heroes at that time, but again, to cite a few volunteers in the Spanish Civil War is pathetic when contrasted with (a) those of us who were fighting a real global war, and (b) the energetic work done by many on the Left post-1939 to actively weaken Hitler's targets and keep the USA out of the war. Joe Kennedy was not some incredible exception - he had many compatriots on the liberal-left, as well as the isolationist right.

Let's note the historical back and forth, shall we?

The Left was happy to adopt "antimilitarism" as a mantra at the 6th World Congress in 1928. Note that Bolshaya Sovyetska Enstiklopedia (2nd Ed. Moscow 1950) categorically states that antimilitarism is fundamentally different from pacifism. It is an integral part of the struggle against the capitalist system and is closely tied to the defense of the socialist state. (Guess who?)

Of course, this sort of thing would bear fruit in the Oxford resolutions et. al. pre-war. Not to mention less benign manifestations. I cite this because it prepared the ground for much pre-war and early war activity. Also because, as the liberal-left's willing collaboration with ANSWER et. al. show, little has changed.

True to the 6WC credo, the Left did managed to get wound up about fascism when the Soviet Union was involved (Spanish Civil War). Read the literature from that time, however, and what you find is that the guys like Orwell were systematically betrayed by their "comrades".

Anti-fascism would be a theme of the Seventh World Congress, as one might have predicted given the threat picture. Once the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, however, everything changed. "Peace" movements, exhortations to industrial sabotage (quite widespread in France), and direct appeals to soldiers aimed at lowering their morale and creating defections were all considerably stepped up after that - across Western Europe, as well as in the USA, and in many states continuing right into the actual war against the Nazis.

The whiplash was hard for some to take, and led to further "Kronstadt moments" for some. But many went along, including many unaffiliated with the CPUSA but happy to be part of campaigns involving them. Orwell and others have also noted the pattern of noticeable excitement and deference when discussing "strong" men, however bestial, and in that sense also little has changed. (The isolationist right seems to share it at times, though unlike its counterpart, that's a marginalized movement these days.)

Once Germany attacked the USSR, of course, all that changed again, and now the Left was solidly anti-fascist. Whereupon, Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia, and the myth of the anti-fascist Left was born.

In reality, history is rather murkier and - dare I say - more "nuanced" than that kind of simplisme.

Joe, you're conflating "Left" and "Communism". They're not synonymous, as you well know. During the Spanish Civil War, the NKVD was busy liquidating Leftists in Spain who were insufficiently Stalinist. To pretend that Leftists only discovered how nasty the Nazis were in 1936 is, simply, nuts.

Quoting from the Soviet encyclopedia about pacifism doesn't change the fact that the Nazis were products of the radical Right, and were coddled by conservative businessmen and politicians in Germany and the USA. Businessmen like Fritz Thyssen and Prescott Bush.

There were some real heroes at that time, but again, to cite a few volunteers in the Spanish Civil War is pathetic when contrasted with (a) those of us who were fighting a real global war, and (b) the energetic work done by many on the Left post-1939 to actively weaken Hitler's targets and keep the USA out of the war.

Your point (a) is nonsense. The Spanish Civil War was over by the time Hitler attacked Poland. Your point (b) laughably downplays the various nationalist, Rightist movements which were sympathetic to Hitler and so focused on their anti-Communism that they welcomed the Nazi rearmament of Germany. Why did the French Right oppose Leon Blum? Who were the Rexists? Aside from international Communism, who else did these Rightists have a habit of blaming for the decadence of the West? "Internal enemies" of a certain kind, perhaps?

Stickler, I believe the charge of "laugably downplaying" would be most appropriately applied to yourself.

Stickler, your own words confirm the charge robin Roberts levels in #24.

remind us all who went off to fight the Fascists in the late 1930s.

From North America? The Canadians, and the rest of the British Empire.

Who opposed Nazism in the United States before December 10, 1941?

Isolated individuals across the spectrum, including both Democrats and Republicans. As noted re: Willkie... but you'd have to actually, uh, read.

And, who collaborated with them.... Who wanted us to think about America First?

The CPUSA, and a chunk of the liberal-left as well as the right. Thanks for conceding re: Joe Kennedy.

There was, as pointed out, quite a lot of collaboration of a more sinister sort in other countries, which was also not confined to the Right.

Were the heroic anti-Fascists: a) Liberal Democrats, or b) Conservative Republicans?

Before 1941? Neither. They were NON-AMERICANS. There is a world outside your country, you know.

And I'm glad you've swallowed the DDR's line re: the nature of Naziism. Too bad it isn't nearly the whole truth. Nazis, the Left, and the Right.

Who opposed Nazism in the United States before December 10, 1941?

And though the organization brought a core of devoted activists to Pelley's crusade, even at its peak, the Silver Shirts remained a fringe group mostly ridiculed by both the national and local press. A 1934 Asheville Times editorial, for example, openly mocked Pelley: "Asheville enjoys the rather dubious distinction of being the headquarters of the Silver Shirts. This honor was not achieved, but thrust upon the city. ... We have seen the Silver Shirt movement for what it is. In laughing at it, we laugh at others who find it a menace to the Republic."

Meanwhile, the federal government was also casting a wary eye on the Silver Shirts. In 1934, the House of Representatives' newly created Special Committee on Un-American Activities sent an investigator to Asheville to seize a sizable portion of Pelley's financial records. (Later, in 1940, the committee would call Pelley to Washington to grill him about his pro-Hitler organizing and publishing.)

An interesting piece on the rise and fall of the leader of the 'Silver Shirts'
Brings to mind Charlie Chaplin and his efforts, although he did have to virtually self-finace the Great Dictator.

I suppose I shouldn't allow the reference to "conservatives" go unremarked. The current definition of the term refers to an ideological movement that is post-WWII in origin. Making the implication that the movement is the same as pre-war "right" is a gross misrepresentation.

More on the subject of fascism and socialism