Dear Americans: Stop Hitlerizing Your Enemies!

Dear Americans,

I am amazed at your infinite capacity to swallow media campaigns that effectively transform every enemy of the US, no matter how large or small, into a full-blown nemesis akin in might and evil intentions to non other than Adolf Hitler himself. First Saddam, then Bin Laden, and now Ahmadinejad. Honestly guys, this is getting boring!

Naturally, every nation has its strategic allies and enemies. War is a misguided attempt to resolve a conflict between nations of opposing interests. But war would sit much more lightly on the conscience of the warring if it was much more than a conflict, if it was a quest to combat evil, and in that respect, World War II was just perfect!

WWII was the closest ever to a Hollywood-style good-against-evil movie. The setting was just perfect: An alliance of unreasonable expansionists, with dangerous, inhumane ideologies, coupled with a massive war machine, bent on destroying the free world as we know it. The plot was also perfect: A Hollywood-style struggle leading to a massive show-down and a decisive win, the villain falls to his demize and the world is saved. The story ends swiftly and cleanly and the movie becomes an instant blockbuster hit -- golden material for hundreds of video games to satisfy generations to come...

The problem is, after WWII, Americans got used to Hollywood-style wars, and it became necessary to present them with a Hitler-like villain with horns and a pitch fork before they would approve of any call for war. As of course your casual every-day conflict is not nearly as black-and-white as WWII, and your everyday enemy is nowhere near Adolf Hitler with his evil plots and massive military force, it becomes a necessary precondition of war to HITLERIZE your enemy. That is, to pull some media smoke-and-mirror tricks that would transform an every-day enemy into a mythical nemesis. Here is how it works:

1. Identify one guy that can be used to iconify the nation you happen to consider as an enemy


2. Block all media channels that could present to the public this guy's real point of view, so that you can:


3. Start exaggerating through massive media campaigns until the public is convinced that this guys is:
   
   
   
   1. A brutal dictator, oppressing his own miserable people who would much rather see him dead
   
   
   2. Holds dangerous beliefs that will invariably lead him to war against the US
   
   
   3. Is unreasonable, irrational, and lacks the logical integrity to support any of his own outrageous arguments, yet:
   
   
   4. Is extremely smart to a degree only rivaled by his evil intentions
   
   
   5. Single handedly commands a massive military machine
   
   


4. Convince the public that compared to this guy, we are innocent lambs. Attack any media channels that challenge our innocence by accusing them of insulting the public, and failing to honor our fallen heroes or our troops in the field


5. Now start pairing this guy's name with Hitler's on every possible occasion. This way your call for war later on will go unimpeded.

Like I said, this recipe has already been successfully applied on Saddam and Osama, and is now being applied on Ahamdinejad. I will dedicate a future post to each one of these three cases. The point I am trying to make here is that this technique is wearing too thin. It's like we all live in this one, boring, never-ending, cheap-production Hollywood movie!

Dear Americans, fight whomever you have to fight, but please stop trying to convince us that all your enemies are evil tyrants that are relentlessly plotting to take over the world. Have you taken a look at the world lately? Really, it's not that evil! How many more Hitler mockups are you planning to parade before us? Just how gullible do you think we are?