By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--April 12, 2017
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“You had -- someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to the -- to using chemical weapons,” # told reporters at the White House briefing Tuesday. “So you have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself, ‘Is this a country that you and a regime you want to align your self with?’” The remark was meant to emphasize why the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad necessitated an American military response. While chemical weapons weren’t widely used on th battlefield in the European theatre in World War II, #’s comments immediately raised eyebrows because of the Nazi’s extensive and well-documented use of poison gas during the Holocaust. Six million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust, many in Nazi gas chambers.
Pressed by a reporter to clarify what he meant by this remark, # said that he meant that Hitler had never used chemical weapons in the way Assad had, while acknowledging they were used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. “I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” # said. Of Hitler, # said, “He brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that.” He then added: “But in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent -- in the middle of towns....I appreciate the clarification…that was not the intent.” After the briefing, the White House issued another statement: “In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” # wrote. “I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”Clearly # was not trying to whitewash anything Hitler did. If anything he was citing Hitler precisely because everyone knows Hitler did such awful things and he was trying to make the point that Assad committed a particular evil that even Hitler did not commit. The problem, of course, is that this is true only if you parse the words very carefully. Maybe Hitler didn't go indiscriminately into German towns and gas everyone who happened to be around, but it is no less morally repugnant to round up Jews into "Holocaust centers" and gas them.
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