12.01.06 Review: What About Hitler

On the very long flight to Europe I finished reading WHAT ABOUT HITLER?:Wrestling with Jesus’s Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World.  Here’s a little about it.

Now, I usually read books twice: Once to get the basic gist of it and the second time with a pen in hand underlining, writing questions in the margins, writing disagreements in between lines, circling things I’d like to learn more about.  I’ve only read this book once so far, just enough to know what I like and don’t like about it in very general terms.

WHAT I LIKE:
My favorite section is on our tendency as nations to “Hitlerize” our enemies.  No one in their right mind, it’s presumed, would argue against fighting Hitler, the personification of evil if there ever was one.  So many nations since WWII have cast their enemies in his image.  The author cites numerous examples.  The US has done this to BinLaden and Hussein.  And they’ve done it to us.  Yea, they make the same claim - that the US is just like WWII era Germany.

The author includes a letter written by Osama in which he makes his case.  And, it’s a good sounding case.  The author also cites US writings making the case that Osama is a Hitler.  And it’s a good sounding case as well.  The point?  If Hitler - or a Hitler-like enemy - is the only enemy we’re justified to kill then watch out, because any enemy can be spun to resemble Hitler in some way.  No one’s safe.  In a sense the US, then, is reaping what it has sown in that our enemy is now doing to us (casting us as a Hitler justifiably destroyed by any means necessary) what we have done to so many enemies since WWII.