Is Pat Buchanan Wrong and a Racist?
Flap previously reported on Pat Buchanan’s column Was World War II Worth It?. The piece is here:
Now, former Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch has written a piece in response:
In a May 11, 2005 column in The American Cause captioned “Was World War II Worth It?†Pat Buchanan argues that America and the world would have been better off if the U.S. and Britain had not joined World War II and defeated Hitler.
Buchanan posits that Communism, not National Socialism (Nazism), was democracy’s enemy. He cites in this regard President Bush’s recent statement that the 1945 agreement in Yalta “followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable…The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history.â€
Buchanan is dead wrong. If we had joined with Hitler and the mass murderers of Nazi Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, ultimately Great Britain and the U.S. would have been conquered by the Nazis. Tens of millions more would ultimately have been killed, including all world Jewry, and that would have meant American Jews as well…
Read the rest Of Mayor Koch’s column here.
Buchanan is wrong on his history and wrong on his revisionist remake of same.
Pat better be willing to debate these issues and explain his opinions fully.
4 Comments
Gus Stone
As an American Jew, I find it ironic and I must confess I'm amused- to hear Mr, Koch complain about Pat Buckanan and by inference Bush…what did you expect ED?
In my estimation Mr. Koch foolish support for the likes of Bush, merely engenders this kind of ultra-ignorant revisionist history.
Ed! that makes you complicit in this morbid spectacle, from Iraq to the bonehead statements across the board on pretty much every issue this crowd puts their corrupt paws on. Now we all have to wait for the time when sensible and reasonable folks can start undoing the damage. Yom Kippur is coming ED.
Gus Stone
Nate Scoble
Re Koch's apparent surprise at Buchanan's bonehead statement that the Nazis were not the real problem in World War II, I agree with the writer who asks, "What did you expect, Ed?"
My feeling is that anyone, and especially any American Jew, who doesn't perceive that Jews are merely props on the stage of Armageddon for Bush and the right-wing Christians is fooling him- or herself.
My father always felt that the real threat to Americans would not in the end be Communism or a Communist takeover in this country, it would be a fascist takeover. His view seems dead-on accurate now.
Nate Scoble
Thomas Phillips
I am sure neither of you have worked in Congress as I have and seen the sway that the Jewish Lobby, for the lack of a better term, has over many a senator and congressman. I must say that Ed Koch's view is dumb, and branding Buchanan a racist simply because he thinks communism is a bigger threat is stupid. Ed Koch assumes that since Nazism wasn't the real enemy, that Buchanan is stating that we should have allied with Hitler?
He is trying to sensationalize a story, which is done by the simple mentioning of the word "racist", which is used much too often.
Gus Stone
I haven't worked in Congress Thomas, but I'm aware as a Jew that the Jewish lobby has gained in strength, that's a recent phenomenon and thankfully it has happened. During WWII the "sway" as you put it, wasn't quite there, were it not for the fact that Germany declared war with the US we may have never entered. Yes, I'm critical of Koch for what I consider almost unforgivable idiocy in aligning himself with the Bush crowd. That aside, and beyond the fact that I don't think his a fool; but that he is a damn fool-as Twain might've put it- Buchanan's comments have to be challenged.
I don't think one can reduce this to a mere case of -Oh look at what you have done! Pat was just kind of talking, and now you've unjustly have labeled him a racist! …..
The issue here sir, is the overall climate; one that allows people to feel emboldened like Buchanan does, to come out and feel justified in pronouncing our participation in that war a very questionable act, declare it ipso-facto a mistake, and then try and wash it all under some righteous outrage at the incomprehensible arrangements nations do behind the backs of their people.
And if indeed you know any history, you would be loath to so easily dismiss the comments of a Buchanan. I'll leave you with this:
Billy Graham, the "spiritual" leader and counselor to many a president (Nixon in particular) is on tape declaring how -if only the conditions allowed it- something could be done about the Jews….You can go to the archives and listen for yourself.
Now, what he needed was the climate and the conditions. Does that matter? I think it does, like cancer, once the organism is ripe it's all just a matter of time, that's what fascism needs to thrive, and when we reduce the over ideal of the nation to the most simplistic cliches as this administration does, we then run the risk as we appear to be doing, of allowing the worst in us to come out and infect everything.
That's why I call Koch a damn fool, because if anybody would know how politicos of any stripe work, he would…but no, he went and voted to re-elect what history will deem to be one of the most corrupt and ignorant administrations in the history of this nation. And while I would not go so far as to call them fascist yet, they sure as hell seem dangerous to me and could very well put us there.