Greg Sargent's sums up the bigger theme behind Hoekstra's comments thusly:
The argument that terrorists represent a graver threat than the Nazis did appears to be gaining traction among current and former Republican officials.
The latest to make the claim: GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra, at a press conference today announcing the GOP’s new “Keep Terrorists Out Of America Act,” which is designed to restrict the housing of Guantanamo detainees on American soil.
Asked by a reporter whether this wasn’t comparable to the detainment of Nazis in prisoner of war camps during World War II, Hoekstra said the two were “night and day” because of the threat of “homegrown terrorism” and because of 9/11.
The other day, Condoleezza Rice suggested that Al Qaeda was a greater threat than Nazi Germany, because the Nazis didn’t attack the homeland. Hoekstra appears to be making a slightly different argument: That the individual terror suspects are a greater threat than individual Nazis were on American soil because of their alleged association with terror.
But David Kurtz notes that some 425,000 Axis POWs were detained in America at the end of World War II, versus only a couple hundred Gitmo detainees who would be held here.
Either way, the Republicans are now really running with this one again.
dday puts the meme in its place:
A substantial chunk of the Republican Party believes that people who live in caves represent a greater threat to the American way of life than the Third Reich. Just so you know.Look, I understand that Republicans want talking points. Talking points are fun and obviate the need for you to do any serious thinking of your own. But when it comes to drawing comparisons between the threat posed by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Nazi Germany, let me dispel any of your illusions categorically: terrorism is absolutely and unequivocally less dangerous than Nazi Germany was.*
Period. End of story. It's not even a debateable point.
The fact that a member of the highest legislative body in our country is able to say things like this without being laughed off the stage is pretty sad.
* - Unless of course you want to go down the road of making the argument that terrorism is more dangerous because it has been compelling leaders within our own government to tear down our cherished freedoms, spit on our founding values, shred the Consitution and desecrate the rule of law so that they can wage a neverending "War on Terror". But we won't go down that road because I seriously doubt that Rep. Hoekstra or Condi Rice subscribe to the idea that they had anything to do with defiling any of our values or freedoms.
