We have met the enemy and he is us

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9781402796197_p0_v2_s260x420Did you know that 300 U.S. companies continued to provide
the Nazi war machine with vital products and equipment throughout the Battle of
Britain and didn't stop doing so until after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor?

According to Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, the
authors of a fascinating book entitled, Grey Wolf, these weren't no-name
corporations either. GM, Ford, ITT, Alcoa and Standard Oil were just some of
the companies who aided and abetted the enemy. In fact, in recognition of his
service to the Third Reich, Henry Ford was one of only 14 non-Germans to
receive the uber prestigious Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.

I think these scandalous facts are more timely than ever
since one could posit the view the U.S. is inadvertently responsible for aiding
and abetting the notorious Boston bombers.

As we now know, our country provided vital war material
to the Taliban during the 1980s when a young terrorist by the name of Osama bin
Laden joined thousands of other Afghani rebels to oust the Soviet Army from
their country.

Later, when we abandoned the Afghans to their own
devices, they turned on the U.S. and began taking their first, small steps on
the road to 9/11, and beyond.

According to published reports, the Tsarnaev brothers
learned both their radical Islamic ways and crude bomb-making techniques on the
web. And, one could argue many of those web sites wouldn't exist if we hadn't
completely abandoned the Taliban way back when.

I've always believed in the aphorism, the past is
prologue. With so many Americans scratching their heads and wondering how
things have gotten so bad, we really need to call a time out and do a whole lot
more digging. We need to go beyond merely understanding the grievances between
Russia and Chechnya. We need to understand our own culpability in initially
aiding and abetting the enemy (and fanning the initial flames of Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism).

As the authors of Grey Wolf point out, helping the bad
guys seems to be an American tradition of long-standing. To quote Pogo, 'We
have met the enemy and he is us.' Would that the average American could put it
all in perspective.

5 thoughts on “We have met the enemy and he is us”

  2. Thanks, Matt. It’s so important to understand the past in order to gain a greater perspective on the present. As I noted in the blog, the Boston bombings didn’t occur in a vacuum. They were the latest event in a long line of such incidents that one can trace back to the creation of the Israeli state after WWII (if not before recorded history, considering the endless enmity between radicalized groups of the three major religions).

  3. Great blog…Except the taliban wasnt created until the early 1990s. The US abandoned the mujahadeen (holy warriors), some of whom founded the Taliban following the Soviet withdrawal. Just fyi

  4. Thanks, Matt. It’s so important to understand the past in order to gain a greater perspective on the present. As I noted in the blog, the Boston bombings didn’t occur in a vacuum. They were the latest event in a long line of such incidents that one can trace back to the creation of the Israeli state after WWII (if not before recorded history, considering the endless enmity between radicalized groups of the three major religions).

  5. You are right on, Steve. Our “fortress of democracy” is filled with examples of “great” Americans supporting fascism in the past and today. Germany, 1938: Ford opened a factory to build trucks that came to be used by the German army.
    In 1940, while American pilots were battling the Nazis in the skies over England, a VP at General Motors wrote a book called “America and the New World Order,” espousing his support for the Nazis in their fight against Communism.