At the risk of saying more than I should, that was not an "innocent" conference, and DHS knew exactly what they were looking for. Fight the NYCLU and CAIR as hard as you on this one, they are protecting evil men by this action.

Posted by: longtime lurker at December 16, 2005 9:37 AM

This is another clear example of how ridiculous liberal political correctness has become. Imagine, there are five groups of passengers waiting to board a plane, the first is a 70 year old African-American grandmother reading her bible and accompanied by her seven year old granddaughter, the second are two Hasidic Jews travelling from Amsterdam, probably in the diamond trade, the third are two young, white newlyweds returning from their honeymoon, the fourth is a Chinese businessman and his wife, while the last group is a couple of very nervous young men from Saudi Arabia. Now which group should be singled out for security checks? Accourding to the NYCLU, none of them stand out as a potential threat. This is ludicrous! It's time we realize that using common sense is not a civil rights violation.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 16, 2005 9:43 AM

I'm sure we let Nazi ideology professors into the U.S. during WWII. Oh, never mind.

Posted by: Beagle at December 16, 2005 9:44 AM

Actually, we actively sought out Nazi professors (altho most of them (probably?) didn't want anything to do with Hitler or Nazism)- they built our Space program.

As for the aclu~ is it engendering 'bile and hatred towards liberals' to point out that this is exactly what we Expected the aclu to do! When it comes to islam.

Posted by: Gary at December 16, 2005 9:50 AM

"we actively sought out Nazi professors (altho most of them (probably?) didn't want anything to do with Hitler or Nazism)- they built our Space program..."
-- from a posting above

The German rocket-builders who fled the Russians and were taken in by the West could not be characterized as "didn't want anything to do with Hitler or Nazism." There is no indication that they were anything but willing servants of the Nazi state. Arthur Rudolph was later revealed to have been a war criminal. As for the sinister smiling Wernher von Braun -- in one of his songs Tom Lehrer took care of "Wernher von Braun."

Were these people from Pennemunde necessary to the space program? From Goddard on, America had its home-grown talent. It is unclear to laymen. What is clear is that their scientific talents were used, and their moral failings overlooked. Sometimes that is worth it; sometimes it isn't. Lucky Luciano, it is said, helped to make sure the docks of Naples were welcoming to the American invasion forces. His kind of immorality -- the usual Mafia kind -- is a lesser moral affront than that of the Nazis.

Posted by: Hugh at December 16, 2005 10:04 AM

Robert. so true... so true, it is amazing, with the limitations, that TSO's can do their jobs at all. Additional limits would make it even harder.

Right now, what helps keep this country safe, is the dedication of the great majority of officers who deal with, ethnic sensitivity courses, and political correctness. and wake up everyday determined to do the job.

If the ACLU wins out then every action that is taken will be further scrutinized.

You can not micromanage what the front-line troops do, you must empower them to use deductive and informed analysis. When a suspect is before you, religion should be one of the most important pieces of a profiling system.

Education, about the nature of the threat is very important.

Jihadwatch is an important resource.

Keystone Coppery, yes there is some of that, but the worst examples come from high up in the chain of command.

I would say the greatest danger, is institutionalized dihimmitude not any one individual.

Posted by: El Cid at December 16, 2005 10:17 AM

Actually, these Nazi scientists were co-opted as a necessary part of winning the Cold-War. Better they be America's Nazis than Stalin's Nazi's. Besides, whatever there warped ideological background, they were brilliant scientists and had they all gone over to Nazism ideological reflection, Stalin, the Soviets could have gained technological dominance over the west. In the case of Von Braun, he was a stereotypical engineer focused with a single vision on his science, whether in Germany or the US. There is no proof that he personally committed any crimes against humanity and the US was wise not to lose his skills. Oh to be a fly on the wall at Von Braun's meeting with Albert Einstein.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 16, 2005 10:30 AM

Pah. No matter how much I read about WW II, I still have gaps in my knowledge.

But I do thank the aclu for proving one of my contentions. There may Yet be a utopia, nariz- but it will be the Caliphate if this kind of thinking continues unchallenged.

Posted by: Gary at December 16, 2005 10:31 AM

If they are a threat to the country, then can be detained. If they are Islamic, there is a chance that they are a threat to the country. The math is quite simple.

Posted by: DCWatson at December 16, 2005 10:33 AM

The United Way ~US Federal Government Campaign gives a portion of all donations to the ACLU.

Most government employees are arm twisted to donate to the United Way Federal Campaign but do not realize that their money goes to organizations like the ACLU and other groups they would never dream of supporting.

Don't give to the UNITED WAY. If you must because your employer arm twists then designate on your donation form where the funds are to go.

Dont' give to the UNITED WAY ~ they give to the ACLU.

.
.
.
You can check your local United Way Campaign office to see if THEY also have the ACLU's number on their list. Some don't, most do.

Posted by: Borg at December 16, 2005 10:40 AM

D.C, I have found your website very helpful, the math is quit simple, if one understands that the enemy is Islam and that mental baggage of the Islamic community and it's supremacists ideology, makes it a natural breeding ground for Jihadists.

Posted by: El Cid at December 16, 2005 10:41 AM

I've wondered who in their right mind would ever contribute to the ACLU? Virtually every position they take ultimately undermines individual liberty in America. They are like the UN, creating chaos and always taking the side of the oppresser over the oppressed. Many thoughtful people, like Denis Praeger, have abandoned this immoral group. Where does the money come from now? It wouldn't suprise me to see CAIR and al-saud behind this.

Posted by: Infidel33 at December 16, 2005 10:42 AM

"The government cannot criminalize American citizens for their religious beliefs," said Catherine Kim, ACLU Staff Attorney. "Americans need to know that they can practice their religion and attend religious conferences without fear of government reprisals."

I don't see the thorough investigation of these muslims as portraying them as criminals, I don't see any investigation as a reprisal no more than when I am detained at an airport and thoroughly searched because I made a decision to change flights different than my original itinery and ended up missing flights twice because of this. But I'm still glad that the TSA is doing their job. A bit frustrated, but I did not complain because I am more concerned about the our security than I am about about my own petty inconvenience----Thank you very much!

Sorry, but the tenants of Islams Quran and the hadith are the problem.

Posted by: Mackie at December 16, 2005 10:42 AM

"The government cannot criminalize American citizens for their religious beliefs," said Catherine Kim, ACLU Staff Attorney. ...

Oh really? I suppose that will, in the end, depend on who is in power and what thinking bolsters their decisions:

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/chuckcolson/2005/12/15/179186.html

Off for the weekend, stay safe Everyone!

Posted by: Gary at December 16, 2005 10:49 AM

Mackie, a more intelligent policy at the TSA, using analysis of a persons background and religion would not penalize the average middle American.

One of the unfortunate consequences, of the Islamic assault on the world, is the making of the lives of Infidels unpleasant and hard.

Yes, the rudimentary security that we have now, while effective, penalize innocents, and I am not talking about Muslims.

We need technology, to make the searches less intrusive, Intel to flag the suspicious, and Identify the fact that the front-line troops can should be the eyes and ears of the system.

Posted by: El Cid at December 16, 2005 11:10 AM

"Nazi ideology profesors"

Your digression on rocket scientists, while fascination, has nothing to do with what I wrote.

Muslim scripture is the problem. Those who follow the official books are the most radical. Those who ignore the books might be harmless. But until we have a blood test, I view 20' as danger-close.

Posted by: Beagle at December 16, 2005 11:21 AM

Nazis funneled into the US after WWII?

Two words--Operation Paperclip.

There was an entire community of them in Birmingham AL working on the space program.

Posted by: Whistling Dixie at December 16, 2005 11:23 AM

The conference being attended by the "Harrassed and Helpless" has it's own website:

http://www.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/convention/media-room.asp

Scroll down and view the trailer.

WARNING!!! You might weep(not), you might laugh (definitely), but you will certainly enjoy the portion toward the end of the trailer which includes a short clip or photo of each speaker. The transition from one speaker's photo to the next is apropos, to say the least.

Make sure your volume is up.

Posted by: XRDC at December 16, 2005 11:34 AM

"Muslims of a more peaceful bent..."
-- posted by Robert

I would much prefer the word "passive" to "peaceful" because there is nothing peaceful about tacitly colluding with murderers.

Anybody who accepts the Koran and the Sunnah is an inherently violent person deserving great suspicion and active distrust.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at December 16, 2005 2:10 PM

"I was treated like a criminal for no other reason than because I was Muslim,"

Sounds just like "I was caught with 5 kilo's of cocaine and they treated me like a criminal..."

If your a cult-member of a criminal organization then you should expect to be treated like a criminal.

If border-control and immigration look away when Mohammedans are on the war-path to and fro, then I guess we may just as well keep the borders open...

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at December 16, 2005 2:16 PM

Time for some leadership from the Whitehouse and the Congress. What's that?

Deathly silence.

Why's that?

Can't have our vaunted conservative leadership, pissing off the Saudis can we? Especially since the House of Bush house of Saud are so tight, and both represented by "F*ck the Jews" Jim Baker III's law firm and Saudi lobby of Baker Botts.

What would Rove's good buddy Grover Abdullah Norquist say? or the GOP wing of the American Muslim Society have to say, by targeting Islam as an alien ideology.

Posted by: Nariz at December 16, 2005 4:13 PM

Nariz tugs the line, dangling the bait before the hungry but wary jaws of the various bass, carp, perch, walleye, and muskie floating in the pool...

Look left, look right, Assertive Liberal Nariz is trying to pick a fight.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at December 16, 2005 4:40 PM

Alarmed Pig Farmer:

Never was too fond of stink bait, myself...slimey fisherman!

Posted by: XRDC at December 16, 2005 5:36 PM

Hi Whistling Dixie;

There were as many as 2000 of these Germans working in Alabama for NASA and the military. However, it was in Huntsville, Alabama not Birmingham. Huntsville is about 75 miles north of Birmingham and is still the location of the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space Camp, US Army Space and Missile Defense Command/US Army Forces Strategic Command (SMDC/ARSTRAT), Redstone Arsenal/ Military Strategic Operations Research Center, the US Army Engineering and Support Center, as well as dozens of private military and space contractors.

In 1950 Huntville was a sleepy little Alabama farming town on the Tennessee River. It was Von Braun and his expatriot Germans who transformed the area into the high-tech center it is today. Sadly, the politically-correct elite blocked the HWY 565 from being renamed the Von Braun Expressway because of his WWII past.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 16, 2005 7:52 PM

"Oh to be a fly on the wall at Von Braun's meeting with Albert Einstein."
-- from a posting above

What meeting is this?

"Sadly, the politically-correct elite blocked the HWY 565 from being renamed the Von Braun Expressway because of his WWII past."

And why do you insist that the Peenemunde scientists were guiltless when many have concluded that they loyally followed the dictates, and worked furiously to help, the Third Reich? Didn't Arthur Rudolph have to flee once his full past was revealed? Why do you give Wernher von Braun a pass, and deplore the fact that a certain Highway 565 was not "renamed trhe Von Braun Expressway because of his WWII past"? I'm not a member of any elite, and have never been "poitically correct" and if you think only the "politically correct elite" deplore the likes of Von Braun you are mistaken. And in fact, if you can't figure out what was wrong with Von Braun, then why be terribly upset at Islam, and the Jihad? For totalitianisms, whether of the Nazi or Islamic variety, tend to offer the Total Regulation of Life, and the Complete Explanation of the Universe. To deplore the Islamic version, and not the Nazi one, calls the basis for one's convictions into question.

As for the supposed indispensability of the Peenemunde group, that was greatly exaggerated during the Cold War so as to get people to accept all sorts of immoral decisions that were made. A similar decision was made as to Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi intelligence chief who, it was believed, had a valuable network of agents who would prove useful to the Americans. In fact, many of those who had been loyal to Hitler became not agents for the Americans, but double agents, actually working for the Soviets. Every pact with the Nazi devil that tbe Americans made -- including a role in helping Klaus Barbie escape -- proved to be either of minimal value, or actually self-defeating, and dangerous.

Posted by: Hugh at December 16, 2005 10:38 PM

"I was treated like a criminal for no other reason than because I was Muslim,"

I want to see more and more of that.

In Islamic countries and communities a Christian is treated like a criminal for no other reason than being a Christian.

And I am not talking from hearsay, but based on daily personal experience right here right now.

Posted by: rocky at December 16, 2005 11:20 PM

Hugh,

There was no evidence at all against Von Braun using slave labor, or ever voicing a single anti-semitic statement. He built missiles and is criticized for the V1s and V2s that hit the UK. Whatever use the nazis had for these scientists, I suspect they were motivated by simple German patriotism and love of science. Von Braun was an engineer, not a politician and his loyalty to the US was unquestioned. Because of people like him, Neil Armstrong, not Yuri Gargarin, walked on the moon and the US controls the internet. Because he is the man most resposible for Huntsville being the equivalent of Alabama's silicone valley, he certainly deserves to have a 22 mile long highway named for him without politically correct quibling.

I don't know when or how often he and Einstein met, but I've seen the photo of it in several places in Huntsville.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 17, 2005 2:04 AM

"no evidence at all against Von Braun using slave labor, or ever voicing a single anti-semitic statement. He built missiles and is criticized for the V1s and V2s that hit the UK....I suspect they [the Nazi scientists at Peenemunde] were motivated by simple German patriotism and love of science."
-- from a posting above

Anyone who can describe those who worked long and hard for the Third Reich, who built the V2 rockets whose use indiscriminately against London and other English cities, as people "motivated by simple German patriotism and love of science" reminds me of the sinister justifiear of the Nazis, speaking to the American women's club, in that immortal story, "Conversation Piece 1945," by the old-fashioned Russian liberal, that hater of the Bolsheviks and of the Nazis, Vladimir Nabokov. Read that story -- it will do you good. Or if you don't, anyone reading this posting should find that story, and read it.

"Simple German patriotism and love of science." What moral idiocy is this. How, with views like that, can you really feel fully the horror of Islam as a Total System, if you cannot feel visceral horror at anything to do with the Nazis? Or for that matter the Communists in their Stalinesque yawning heights or depths?

Have you read the FBI files, on-line, about Arthur Rudolph, the biggest Peenemunde cheese? Are you aware of how many moral errors the American government made regarding ex-Nazis after World War II? Wisner (the father of Frank Wisner) at the C.I.A. had something to do with this. Find out about Reinhard Gehlen and what trusting him and his "agents" did for the United States -- or failed to do, and what hiring such people allowed the Communists to have a field day with. Remember Adenauer's second-in-command, or remember K=the scandal over Kiesinger? Remember the head of the Deutsche Bank, and all the other Nazis who were allowed, with American connivance, to rise high in the West German bureaucracy, and how the Soviet files on such people often allowed them to be blackmailed by the Soviets?

The best book on the way in which many former loyal members of Hitler's regime, loyal and enthusiastic members, rose high after the war is fully told in the book "The New Germany and the Old Nazis" by T. H. Tetens. It came out in the early 1960s; it passed without sufficient notice; it deserves to be read. The moral failures of the American government were also geopolitical failures: there was no need to coddle or protect ex-servants of the Third Reich.

You keep returning to the supposed achievements of the Operation Paperclip boys. What you fail to realize is that many native-born Americans, and for that matter many of the European-born Jewish refugee scientists (the ones responsible for the atomic bomb, which hastened the end of World War II), were not inclined to have much to do, however enthusiastic some of the Pentagon muchamucks were, with the Pennemunde group, because they wanted nothing to do with them.

During the heyday of Wernher von Braun as a media darling, the whole campaign was designed to make him seem more important to the American effort than he was. Neither he, nor Rudolph, nor the others were indispensable. That they were good at what they did is clear. The Germans were also good soldiers. So what? The vast American war machine, made necesary by the Nazis and the Japanese supporters of Kodo, and then by Joseph Stalin and the Communists, hardly needed the Peenemunde group beyond an initial push -- if that. I have more faith in the quality of American scientists and American weapons technology than you apparently do, who have swallowed the idea that the Peenemunde group was so important. I think so many people in the know who could have worked on such things wanted nothing to do with Von Braun, Rudolph, and so on, and were not fooled by attempts to whitewash them.

I find the following -- "that
I suspect they [the Nazi scientists at Peenemunde] were motivated by simple German patriotism and love of science" a sentence that is morally intolerable, intolerable whatever spin or explanation you choose to give it. Clearly, you do not feel on your pulse, as you should, what the Nazis, and what those who worked loyally for the Nazis, and who smilingly hid or misrepresented their past (why did Rudolph, exposed, flee to Germany?), stood for.

I wonder exactly what it is about Islam that you find so objectionable, if you do not find the very same things that make Communism, and the supreme example of totalitarian evil, Nazism, so easy to find excuses for -- he "never uttered an anti-semitic remark" and so on. What's next? "They never knew what was going on in the concentration camps."

Spare us. Please.

The Americans made moral and intellectual errors in the course of the Cold War. They were not always about the Nazis. They were also about Islam -- the bland belief that Islam was good, Saudi Arabia (Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, you name it) was our "staunch ally" and always had been (in truth, it never was), because, in the naive American view, "Islam is a bulwark against Communism." Well, so were the Nazis. So what? The reason for deploring a totalitarian or potentially totalitarian belief-system does not change from one system to another.

Posted by: Hugh at December 17, 2005 5:46 AM

Hugh,

You forget that when Von Braun was hired by the US, we were facing a potential threat of Communist world domination. Rudolph was a completely different story than Von Braun. I completely disagree with you that Von Braun and the Germans were not absolutely necessary to the development of the Space Program. Don't take my word for it: Ask any NASA scientist or go to the NASA website http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/history/VonBraun/VonBraun.html which states "Wernher Von Braun was one of the world's first and foremost rocket engineers and a leading authority on space travel. His will to expand man's knowledge through the exploration of space led to the development of the Explorer satellites, the Jupiter and Jupiter-C rockets, Pershing, the Redstone rocket, Saturn rockets, and Skylab, the world's first space station. Additionally, his determination to "go where no man has gone before" led to mankind setting foot on the moon.."

Actually Von Braun was not a loyal Nazi. When the first V-2 hit London von Braun remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet." and soon afterward "the Gestapo arrested von Braun for 'crimes against the state' because he persisted in talking about building rockets which would go into orbit around the Earth and perhaps go to the Moon. His crime was 'indulging in frivolous dreams' when he should have been concentrating on building bigger rocket bombs for the Nazi war machine. Dornberger convinced the Gestapo to release von Braun because without him there would be no V-2 and Hitler would have them all shot.

On arriving back at Peenemunde, von Braun immediately assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Most of the scientists were frightened of the Russians, they felt the French would treat them like slaves, and the British did not have enough money to afford a rocket program. That left the Americans. After stealing a train with forged papers, von Braun led 500 people through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. The SS were issued orders to kill the German engineers, who hid their notes in a mine shaft and evaded their own army while searching for the Americans. Finally, the team found an American private and surrendered to him. Realizing the importance of these engineers, the Americans immediately went to Peenemunde and Nordhausen and captured all of the remaining V-2's and V-2 parts, then destroyed both places with explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train car loads of spare V-2 parts to the United States. Much of von Braun's production team was captured by the Russians" In 1950 Von Braun and his team set up shop in Huntsville and the space program was launched. My source is the NASA itself.

According to the Army report on Von Braun "von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943 and a report on him and his colleagues Riedel and Grotrupp was being prepared. In it von Braun and his colleagues were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well. A young female dentist later denounced them for their comments. The unsuspecting von Braun was arrested and on February 22 was taken to Stettin, where he was imprisoned for two weeks without knowing the charges levelled against him. It was only through the Abwehr in Berlin that Dornberger was able to obtain von Braun's conditional release and Speer apparently intervened on his behalf as well"

As for von Braun being a member of the Nazi party, that was a formality required of every scientist. Membership no more made him a nazi than it made the 16 year old Josef Ratzinger one. Martin Heidegger, psychology founder Karl Jung, and composer Karl Orff were ideological nazis yet they are honored by the western elite without qualms. Von Braun was an honorable man who ranks as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. Let's be real careful before we bear false witness against him.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 17, 2005 2:47 PM

You can also read a detailed look at Von Braun's religious and philosophical development at the Lutheran website http://www.adherents.com/people/pv/Wernher_von_Braun.html

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 17, 2005 3:16 PM

"Von Braun was an honorable man who ranks as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century."
-- from a posting above

No, he wasn't. He was a loyal servant of Adolf HItler and the Third Reich. Plenty of educated Germans managed to flee Germany -- non-Jewish Germans who were disgusted by Hitler, and who had warnings, since the wholesale discharges of German Jews from universities, of what was to come.

Though for shallow raisons d'etat, a campaign to not merely whitewash the Peenemunde crew, including Von Braun, was undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a great popular success, it required one to overlook a great deal about their operation, and what they did at Peenemunde, right up to the end, when they were delighted to be captured by the Americans, and not only to escape punishment, but like Gehlen, to be thought so useful as to have the little matter of their pasts ignored. This is one of the least attractive episodes in all of American history. Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Lincoln would not have been pleased.

Von Braun was one more swine refashioning his past, very cleverly. Look at how Heisenberg reported his famous meeting with Neils Bohr (it was enough to confuse the playwright Michael Frayn, in his unfinest hour). Look at the tape of a nervous, trying-to-ingratiate himself Maurice Chevalier, just after the war, explaining that when he went to Germany he did so with no dishonorable purpose, and perhaps he had been, oui oui oiu, peut-etre just a leetel bit naive, but -- welll, you know how theez things can be, and I hope you weeel onderstand.

Oh, I understand all right. I understand perfectly about Chevalier, and those other Frenchmen who paid their little wartime visits to Germany and sometimes even to Hitler. And I understand Bohr's fury with Heisenberg and his refusal to have anything more to do with him. And I especially understand and find intolerable, those who, despite the all the evidence, despite the entire history of Nazi Germany and the role of the V-2 rocket scientists, not only are not embarrassed by the role that the American govenrment played in rescuing and then favoring, and even honoring, people who should have been punished or at least shunned, nowadays stoutly defend the likes of Wernher von Braun.

As for his being a "scientist" -- that word should not be applied to mere technicians, especially where those technicians are engaged in weapons manufacture, weapons that were used by Nazi Germany, to attack English civilians. Lavoisier and Pasteur, Einstein and Michelson, Dirac and Francis Crick and Aaron Klug, are scientists. Wernher von Braun was a weapons maker, just like the people now beavering away for the Islamic Republic of Iran, or "Dr." A. Q. Khan. Or would you like to describe "Dr." A. Q. Khan as a "greeat scientist" and "loyal son of Pakistan" who deserves our every moral indulgence?

Count me out.

Posted by: Hugh at December 17, 2005 4:51 PM

I met Von Braun with my third grade class in 1970, and I am happy that it is the stars and stripes on the moon and not the hammer and sickle.

His background was completely investigated by the FBI, the OSS, the Army and later by the OSI. The worst they could find on him was that although he clearly did not use slave labor, maybe he turned a blind eye to it. A worse charge could be levelled agsinst George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Paul Robeson was a dedicated communist who betrayed the United States, went to Moscow, and released an album with songs praising Stalin. Still the United States honoured him with a postage stamp, a place as a "Civil Rights Hero" and has several roads named after him.

That Von Braun was arrested and almost shot for anti-regime statements is telling. In fact, after he and his men fled from Peenemunde to find the Americans, Himmler ordered all of them to be executed if found.

The attacks on Von Braun are in the same category as the slanderous attacks on Bl. Pope Pius XII, just another example of the politically correct trying to undermine any "dead white male" that is admired.

Sorry, I don't buy it. I'll trust the assessments of the men and women in Alabama who knew him and worked with him. They are the most competent judges of his character. Himmler failed to kill this brilliant space scientist when he was alive, it is tragic that some want to assassinate his reputation now that he is dead.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 17, 2005 5:29 PM

At the end of the war, rushing into the arms of the Americans so as to avoid capture by the Russians, hardly makes von Braun or his fellows into virtuous souls, nor does any order by Himmler to have them, at that point, killed if in fact they were attempting to surrender give them a varnish of virtue that they never previously possessed..

How in god's name does that make them, Rudolph or von Braun (who became the poster-boy for "our rocket scientists" and was whitewashed by others in the American government, which hardly encouraged those who wanted a full exposure of von Braun's behavior during the war while working loyally and enthusiastically for the victory of the Third Reich, not once trying to sabotage his own efforts, as was the lame excuse offered for Heisenberg in Michael Frayn's version of the Bohr-Heisenberg meeting and aftermath.

And if some of von Braun's American collaborators in Alabama found him pleasant and so on, so what? This kind of moral credulity has been found often. It happens all the time with Muslims -- "oh, he's such a nice guy, so friendly, such a family man. He couldn't possibly believe, do, think those things." [Oh yes he could]. Remember those positively gemutlich picture of the elderly parents of Henlein, leader of the pro-Nazu Sudeten Germans, a picture taken by none other than Margaret Bourke-White for LIFE Magazine? Or, to take another case, all sorts of people, including celebrated members of the faculties at Harvard and Yale, were "impressed" with Paul De Man, who had written over 100 articles, it turned out, of the antisemitic, collaborationist kind, for pro-Nazi papers (including one edited by his uncle) in Belgium. De Man was also a criminal in mnay other respects (and I had details about this directly from Artin Artinian, who died recently in Palm Beach).

What did you expect of von Braun, that he would be heil-hitlering and goosestepping all over Birmingham, Alabama to remind people of what he did until 1945? Did you think the American government in those years would be likely to accuse him and others of having been loyal workers for the Nazis, with their V-2 rockets shooting into London? Why do you say that his American collaborators, well-trained to think on ly the best of these German scientists, absolutely discouraged from ever dwelling upon, or probing too deeply into, their pasts, are, as you assert without the slightest evidence, the "most competent to judge him"? Were the Frenchman Derrida and others in American academic life, including such Yale colleagues as Geoffrey Hartman, who kept refusing to believe the truth about Paul De Man, and found the most absurd arguments for his defense, the "most competent to judge him"? Apparently not.

Your continued ignoring of every point I make, your unbalanced and even crazed remarks about him and other, more general remarks on what the "politically correct" (an all-purpose phrase that must be put out of its cheap misery) do -- there is nothing "politically correct" about being disgusted by what so many Nazis and loyal workers for the Third Reich managed to get away with, some of them because those suffering from moral dementia in the American government thought the Cold War justified everything, even doing what in the end proved to be either not worth doing, or harmful to your own side (like the experience with Reinhard Gehlen and his agents). Have you read all the various reports -- and not just those that reinforce your own made-up mind, about Peenemunde, about what Wernher von Braun was knowingly engaged in, what he was helping, and the role of slave labor at Peenemunde, and the sly way he had of avoiding the subject altogether? Why don't you take a week and read around in the subject? And while you are at it, take a look at the dossier on Heisenberg, especially what was written at the time of Frayn's play about his encounter with Nils Bohr.

If you want to take a stand defending the likes of Werner von Braun, whatever outrage you might care to express on the injustices or cruelties inflicted over the centuries on non-Muslims by Muslims as a result of the doctrines of Islam, will simply appear to be the product of a highly selective morality, a diseased sympathy, and cna much more easily be dismissed as a result. Only those who are consistent in their disgust with injustice and cruelty, across the board, have earned the right to be taken seriously when they discuss the menace of Islam.

The claim that someone finding fault with von Braun is merely an example of "the politically correct trying to undermine any 'dead white male' that is admired" is beyond the pale. Possibly this is a product of the mental pathology exhibited by Pat Buchanan in his well-known tireless defense of the concentration-camp guard Ivan Demanjuk. Possibly just a blend of cliches and wilful refusal to disbelieve mistaken as a brave refusla to be "politically correct." Throwing in a Pope strikes me as remarkable -- what does a Pope, pleasant or unpleasant, subject to criticism or defense, have to do with military scientists working for the triumph of the Third Reich? Merely raising that issue does more damage, inadvertently, to Pope Pius XII's reputation than you realize.

So be it. Now all is clear. All is bright. And were there shepherds watching the spectacle, they would quake, but not a good kind of quaking at a world-shaking event. No, it would be a very different kind of quaking -- at the sight.

Posted by: Hugh at December 18, 2005 1:27 AM

Hugh,

Let's not forget, we are are on the same side about the Islamic threat, and for very personal reasons, I am would never defend any confirmed Nazi. I just don't believe that Von Braun is as tainted as you think.

Since Von Braun began working on rocket development well before the Nazis took power (he had a single minded obsession with outer space from boyhood) and continued that focus throughout his life, the worst he can be accused of is immoral blindness to what was going on. He was not a political man. You have not offered any evidence that he committed any crimes other than expanding science. In fact, when Goering co-opted his missile program to use as weapons, he clearly expressed disapointment i.e "they landed on the wrong planet". Von Braun was not Rudolph.

Garagarin, Mikoyin and other scientists served Stalin and even made propoganda statements for Communism but they are still honored for thier skills and innovations.

If there is evidence that Von Braun cared one rip about Nazi ideology, then show it. Yeah he met Hitler once and showed him a film about missiles. Big deal? He met Eisenhower twice and Kennedy at least seven times. All he cared about was outer space. By your logic, every scientist, every engineer, and every medical doctor in the Third Reich is somehow tainted because they stayed in their own country and continues working.

By the way, we really got off topic here but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 18, 2005 6:39 AM

"for very personal reasons, I am would never defend any confirmed Nazi..."
-- from a posting above

Why must there be "very personal reasons"? I don't have "very personal reasons" for being unforgiving about Nazis and Communists, those who willingly helped Hitler and Stalin, and I don't have "very personal reasons" for regarding the islamization of Western Europe with horror, unless my attachment to certain things -- languages and literatures and art and artifacts in Europe -- are regarded as "very personal reasons."

You quote government-inspired boosterism -- a kind of Chamber and Comnmerce stuff -- about von Braun's supposed great value to the United States. You also note that the one thing that got von Braun in trouble was dreaming still greater dreams of missiles into space -- there is not a single anti-Nazi statement by him, not a single record of the slightest desire to see the overthrow of Adolf Hitler or the defeat of the Third Reich, not a hint of any disenchantment (making plans about how to surrender, when the jib was up, hardly qualifies as being anti-Nazi). Von Braun was a swine, a swine who got away with it and came to America, and created a new persona for himself, an image carefully cultivated. Some chose to believe it.

So what?

Posted by: Hugh at December 18, 2005 3:16 PM

I'm beginning to wonder, would you have executed him without proof? or preferred he give his skills to Stalin since he would be a pariah in the West. To say he made no anti-Nazi statements would condemn most of Europe. Von Braun even refused to wear his SS uniform, putting it on only once when Himmler visited Peenemunde because he was forced to.

You also wrote earlier that I was displaying "the mental pathology exhibited by Pat Buchanan in his well-known tireless defense of the concentration-camp guard Ivan Demanjuk."

If you check the facts, you'll find that after a conviction on Soviet supplied evidence (including a very poorly fake ID badge)the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction and ordered Demjanjuk freed. Their ruling was based partly on the written statements of 32 former guards and 5 former prisoners at Treblinka that Ivan the Terrible's true surname was Marchenko, not Demjanjuk.

Israel stood firm by its legal principle of presumed innocence and refused to condemn a man without a preponderance of evidence.

Demjanjuk may well have been a war criminal but a longstanding Judeo-Christian principle is a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. In the case of Von Braun, I have never seen enough evidence to convict him of anything other than being a scientist having to live under an evil regime.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 18, 2005 7:48 PM

"would you have executed him [von Braun] without proof? or preferred he give his skills to Stalin..."
-- from a posting above

Are those my two choices? Either I wish to have him "executed without proof" or have him captured by the Russians hwere he would naturally be given the opportunity to "give his skills to Stalin..." My, what a very narrow range of choices you offer.

How about this: not "execute" him, not do a damn thing to him, perhaps even allow him to work on rockets. But not honor him. Not lie about his past. Not say what a wonderful fellow he was, and a good neighbor, a swell guy, to all who knew him in Huntsville. He was in up to his neck with the same things that Arthur Rudolph was up to, and knew, at the very least, everything that Arthur Rudolph knew about the use of slave labor. There is not a single statement, not a single act, by Wernher von Braun that indicates any moral difficulty with enthusiastically working for Adolf Hitler.

That doesn't trouble you? No qualms? Perfectly happy to serve as his tireless and stout defender to the end?

And as for your remarks on Demjanjuk, everyone knows that the evidentiary standards, crazily high, of the Isaeli Supreme Court, being hyper-solicitious of the defendant's rights, were what prevented him from having his conviction upheld. I don't know anyone, except those with a secret, possibly unrecognized sympathy for him, and therefore for what he is associated with -- i.e. moral idiots -- who do not think he was guilty.

And if you keep up with the Demjanjuk case, you can see that apparently the Americna government agrees, and is still trying to deport him. Take a look.

But what does it mean, what does it signify, when someone becomes so very concerned about those who criticize the "honors" heaped on von Braun, and simply draw attention to the truth about him, which remains the truth even if, for a while, the American government for reasons of its own, in the post-Sputnik Cold War world, wished not to draw any attention to von Braun's completely unsavory past? And what does it mean, what does it signifcy, when someone wishes to defend, by misstating the real meaning of a court decision, someone like Demjanjuk, whom everybody knows was a concentration camp guard. The only question under discussion is: at which concentration camp, for that will decide if he was merely a sadistic killer, or whether he was a sadistic killer who was nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible"? What a moral choice, what a difference.

I suggest you think about this, for the good of your own soul. Think very hard.

Posted by: Hugh at December 19, 2005 8:33 AM

I don't disagree that Demjanjuk should be tried and if found guilty, punished. I only point out that I agree with the Israeli Supreme Court, that he should be tried for the crimes of Ivan Demjanjuk and not for the crimes of Ivan Marchenko. The same standard of condemnation or exoneration applies to Von Braun. Guilt by association is unjust in all cases.

Werhner von Braun is long dead. He has been judged by God and will be by history. It is a indisputable fact that he was the driving force of the US Space Program and I am willing to honour him for that and that alone. If evidence were revealed of any crimes of his own doing, I would equally condemn him for that. But until then, I will give him the same presumption that I give to any other human being.

Each of us is judged according to our own deeds and none of us are without sin. Saul of Tarsus was a war-criminal without compare but he is honoured for what he did later. Likewise, Moses and David were murderers but they are also rightly honoured. The issue of whether of 22 mile long road should be named after Von Braun by the city of Huntsville should be based on what he did for Huntville. I crimes are proven later, that can be changed.

Antiochus was one of the most evil nazi-like tyrants of ancient times. Jews and Christians alike commemorate the martyrdoms that he ordered. Yet when the Empire became Christian, the city of Antioch remained with the name of this tyrant and became one of the five chief Patriarchates of Christianity. Not one single Christian Emperor, Saint, Bishop, (or Jewish Rabbi) ever demanded that the city be renamed.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 19, 2005 8:40 PM