Film Critic: USA Is Nazi Germany, Iraqi Insurgents Are Defiant Jews

How would you like to wake up New Year's day to read an opinion piece in your paper's entertainment section equating the United States of America to Nazi Germany and depicting Iraqi insurgents as being akin to a little known group of Polish Jews who rescued over a thousand people from Hitler's concentration camps?

That's a great way to start the New Year, dontcha think?

Well, the good folks at the Kansas City Star seemed to miss the inappropriateness in such sentiments during the holidays when they published "Is WWII In Movies Really Iraq?" (h/t NB reader David Godinez):

[F]or many around this globe of ours, the good old USA is viewed as the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany — a formidable war machine that invades countries, terrorizes the locals, ignores the outcry for fairness and justice and imposes its own ideas of the way things should be.

And though they would hate the comparison, fighters for the Iraq insurgency have a lot in common with the Jewish brothers of “Defiance.” Both groups resist what they view as an occupying army with bombs and ambushes.

Those unfamiliar with these Jewish brothers should read an NPR piece on the subject. But I digress: 

Now before you go all DAR on me, I know this is a hugely oversimplified view. Our men in uniform aren’t Nazis — though the distinction may be lost on some poor wretch of an Afghan taxi driver who angered the local war lord, was ratted out to the Yanks as al-Qaida and is learning all about water boarding.

But the lines between good and evil, right and wrong have gotten seriously blurred. “We’re the good guys; they’re the bad guys” may be emotionally reassuring, but in practice it’s a whole lot more complicated. And strangely enough, movies about Nazis are hammering that idea home.

Hmmm. Lines between good and evil, right and wrong have gotten seriously blurred.

I thought the basis of our democracy and our very civilization was that there are well-defined lines between good and evil and right and wrong. Aren't the people blurring these lines -- apart from our enemies, of course -- the folks in the media who have somehow misplaced this simple concept?

Isn't that what leads them to support our enemies while always blaming America first?

Isn't that what leads them to support Hamas and Hezbollah over Israel?

Isn't that what leads them to regularly praise despots like Ahmadinejad, Castro, and Chavez whilst blaming President Bush for anything that goes wrong anywhere on the planet?

Isn't that what leads them to always take the side of criminals over law enforcement?

And now these same people are trying to rewrite history by blurring the line between whether or not the Nazis were good or evil.

Happy New Year!