Just saw the "Faces of John Kerry" ad. Disgusting.
Without comment here's what the American Jewish Congress said about the Moveon submissions.
Update [2004-6-26 13:9:0 by GP]:Update: My point is that the Faces of John Kerry" ad is FEATURED on the Bush website and the AJC response was FEATURED on the WSJ Op Ed page while the Move On submissons were 2 out of over 1000.
I'll bet a Reagan $10 bill that there won't be a similar outrage at AJC or WSJ about Bush interspersing images of Hitler with Kerry, Gore and Dean.
Don't believe me? Note that Drudge hasn't picked up on it.
January 6, 2004
The American Jewish Congress today denounced MoveOn.org for its decision to feature a political ad that compares President Bush to Adolf Hitler. The ad appeared as part of `Bush in 30 seconds,' a contest on the web site to promote the group's anti-Bush campaign.
"MoveOn.org is using the memory of the Holocaust genocide as a political prop," said American Jewish Congress President Jack Rosen. "Comparing the commander-in-chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. Comparing an American president, any American president, to Hitler is an outrage.
Mr. Rosen added, "The comparison diminishes the reality of what happened, and their actions cheapen the memory of a horrific crime. It also does a terrible disservice to this country at a perilous time, when we need to examine the dangers we face with clarity and purpose."
The MoveOn.org comparison comes after a year in which leading figures close to the group have said similar things.
Speaking on "Crossfire" recently, a judge in MoveOn's `Bush in 30 seconds' contest, actress Janeane Garofalo, dismissed the USA Patriot Act as "a conspiracy of the 43rd Reich."
And according to the Washington Post, MoveOn.org funder George Soros told MoveOn.org late last year that the Bush administration reminded him of Hitler's Third Reich. "When I hear Bush say, `You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans."
"The MoveOn.org ad was inexcusable," Mr. Rosen said. "Political figures such as Al Gore, who have associated themselves with MoveOn.org, have a special responsibility to condemn these ads; donors to the group such as George Soros have the same responsibility. They owe it not just to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. They owe it also as a simple matter of decency."
The full text of Mr. Rosen's column in the Monday, January 5 Wall Street Journal follows.
Outrage.org
By Jack Rosen
MoveOn.org, an advocacy group, has sought to energize opposition to the president by sponsoring a contest Bush advertisement to air the week of the State of the Union address. Web site visitors were invited to vote for their favorite ad from a pre-selected group that MoveOn.org deems appropriate for TV. MoveOn.org informed potential ad makers that "we're not going to post anything that would be inappropriate for television." Two of the ads posted on the group's Web site compared Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush. One ad morphed an image of Hitler into President Bush and says that, "1945's war crimes" are "2003's foreign policy."
The Holocaust was the worst crime in history. The Nazis killed six million Jews, and millions of others were murdered in a systematic genocide. Generations were exterminated. Starvation, slave labor, gassing and medical experimentation were tools for the "final solution."
The last survivors of that horror will soon pass from among us. Their eyewitness testimony will be lost, and it is for us to honor ensure that we never forget. It is for them that we have built museums to preserve the horror of these crimes. It is for them that we guard against the danger that the memory of the Holocaust will be trivialized. That danger is abetted when people devalue this monumental evil for political gain.
Today, MoveOn.org is doing just that, using the memory of that genocide as a political prop. Their comparison diminishes the reality of what happened, and their actions cheapen the memory of a horrific crime. It also does a terrible disservice to this country at a perilous time, when we need to examine the dangers we face with clarity and purpose.
The lessons of the Holocaust era loom larger than ever, but not as portrayed by MoveOn.org. It was from the back benches of Britain's Parliament in the 1930s that Churchill warned of the "gathering storm," arguing that the great threat had to be confronted before it was too late. His warning went unheeded. Free nations stood idle as the Nazis harnessed their war machine. Democracies naively hoped for peace. They turned from evil, but the evil did not fade, and when World War II ended 50 million were dead. With terrorists operating under the protection of rogue regimes, Churchill's warning is still apt today. Leadership is about confronting threats to freedom everywhere. President Bush has shown that leadership in Iraq, and our troops have liberated a people who were oppressed by another murderous dictator.
MoveOn.org compares this liberation to the Holocaust. It deploys a picture of Hitler to vilify President Bush. Comparing the commander-in-chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. Comparing an American president, any American president, to Hitler is an outrage.
The MoveOn.org ad was inexcusable. Political figures such as Al Gore, who have associated themselves with MoveOn.org, have a special responsibility to condemn these ads; donors to the group such as George Soros have the same responsibility. They owe it not just to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. They owe it also as a simple matter of decency.