Ahmadinejad – Another Hitler

(From Iran-Watch.com) Iran, with a crucially important Bush Administration assist, and its acquisition of Lebanon, as well as its new partnership with Al Qaeda, is now in preparing to threaten the entire Middle East, and from there Central Asia and even Western Europe via the Mediterranean and North Africa.

If you want to know what the future of the Middle East will look like, look at Lebanon today, now under effective Iranian control. This week Iran cracked the whip in Lebanon. Hezbollah, now responsible to Iran and no longer to Syria, issued an Iranian-approved ultimatum that it should be granted a veto right over policy, including national security and foreign policy, or there would be no more Lebanon.

To draw an analogy from history, Czechoslovakia’s Germans, prompted by Hitler and his Nazis, issued an identical ultimatum to the Czech government in 1938. Within months the state of Czechoslovakia, a key pillar of the contain Germany policy, a robust and successful democracy, and a major achievement of the Versailles Treaty, disintegrated under relentless Nazi pressure. From that point on, Hitler’s way was open to make his move in Europe. Many Iranians protest that the Hitler-Ahmadinejad analogy is overdone. Good. At this moment, it is worthwhile to step back and assess the extent to which the Hitler-Ahmadinejad analogy still applies.

First, to dispose of the most common rationale for comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, that they share a hatred of Jews. This means nothing. Stalin was a famous anti-Semite, and in fact was preparing a massive purge of the Jews from the Soviet government and society as his last major move as dictator, when he passed away in March 1953. Yet the United Nations defeat of Nazi Germany would have been unthinkable without Stalin and the Red Army. Personal views on the part of state leadership on the issue of Jews have little or nothing to do with the Hitler analogy. In fact, Ahmadinejad in a curious way actually needs the Jews and especially Israel as adversaries. They are an essential part of his plan for conquest of the Middle East. If the Jews and Israel did not exist, Ahmadinejad would have to invent them.

Think back to Hitler for a moment. He rose to power in Germany promising war against Stalin and the communists. On this very policy of anti-communism Hitler courted and made inroads with the West European democracies, who gave him Czechoslovakia, Spain, and Austria as inducements to move against Stalin. Did Hitler attack the communists, as promised? No, Hitler cut a deal with Stalin and attacked the West European democracies, Hitler’s original benefactors.

So it was for Saddam Hussein. He proclaimed the Jews sand Zionists as the main enemy, and attacked first Iran and then Kuwait. In other words, Iran’s main target is not Israel, as claimed by Ahmadinejad, but the Sunni Arab states in general and their key allies, beginning with Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.

In short, the characteristic feature of Nazi philosophy, one that unites Ahmadinejad’s plans today with Hitler’s plans of the 1930’s, was the contempt for multi-national states and a willingness to alter borders by force to eliminate such states. For the Nazis, then and now, progress in history lies not in avoiding a war of civilizations but of bringing it on, the faster the better, as the great purifier and accelerator of history. In other words, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional states like Lebanon, Iraq and Syria are not something to be emulated and encouraged, but an affront to nature that must be wiped out.

So Iran now, by copying Hitler, has a basis for declaring war to the finish on Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. On this same basis, the policy of liberating the Shia from decadent, multi-ethnic states and their inclusion in a “Greater Iran,” provides Ahmadinejad a pretext to move against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States with their Shia minorities at will. Their turn will come, once Ahmadinejad finishes with Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. For Hitler, in pursuit of this supreme good of German racial unification and cultural supremacy, borders were made to be overrun, treaties were made to be broken, and non-German ethnic groups were put on this earth only to live under Germany’s Iron Heel. If 1930’s Germany and Hitler can be said to resemble today’s Iran and Ahmadinejad, so be it. If Hitler’s jackboot fits Ahmadinejad, he can wear it.