Hitler and WWII are simply not analogous to the current war (In any case,
analogies prove nothing, but this one is especially dangerous and
misleading.)  Hitler was invading countries; Hitler had built up a massive
war machine; Hitler was slaughtering Jews and rounding them up all over
Europe. There were no weapons inspectors in Germany, and Hitler was
not destroying his missiles (or the equivalent).  And Japan attacked us
before we entered the war.  To our shame, we turned away boats of Jews
seeking refuge.

Hussein is not invading anyone at the moment; Hussein no longer has a
war machine, and we have no evidence for the claim of weapons of mass
destruction; Hussein is not rounding up anyone else though he has
certainly killed people in Iraq.  But Korea is a tyranny; Burma is a tyranny;
there are tyrannies all over the world and we do nothing about them, nor
can we.  There were weapons inspectors in Iraq, and missiles were being
destroyed.  We have not been attacked.

The attempt to make WWII an analogous situation and argue from it is
what Plato would, I think, call "base rhetoric" as it is not an attempt to
deal with or reach truth but to evoke terror and gain agreement by that
means.

It is like the view that we must go to war to protect against terrorists.
Approximately 43% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein ordered 9/11.
He did not, and not even the Bush administration actually says he did;
they just spread an association between them.

This terrible destruction of language and logic convinces people but is
not, therefore, true.  And, to invoke Aristotle's "ethos" form of argument
(also not necessarily true but appropriate), to attack and dismiss those
who hate this war is to deal with the fact that it is also opposed by
Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, the Pope, and nearly all of the American
Council of Churches.  This is not a simplistic matter of who is patriotic,
far less a matter of the war having logic or history on its side.

Nancy