TheRealCJ said:
Well, now that he's back in the limelight, I've been seeing Osama Bin Laden's name coming up a lot in forums and comment threads. Usually out-of-context and with little relevance to the topic, in a lame attempt to compare the topic to him.
So I ask you, should Godwin's law have an addendum added to it to include the "Hitler of our generation"?
Edit: guys, I'm talking about their uses as a catch all internet argument, not who was the more evil person. Geez.
Not even close, It has nothing to do with the kill counts either, Hitler was far more of a phenomena, remember this was a guy who was right about 99.9% of everything he said, and was incredibly charismatic so that .1% of what he said tended to sneak in ans snowball to frightening proportions.
People tend to forget Hitler was an international man of the year before the war, and had massive support around the world, including in the USA, which is why such tight information control was needed when the war got going.
Hollywood tends to present World War II in a very straightforward light, but people rarely bother to consider that that version of things was unsustainable. There is no way Hitler could have invaded and controlled all that territory with only a comparitive handfull of supporters... the Hollywood version has the German people being oppressed, right along with the people of these captured nations, by a minority of fanatics that somehow also manage to be omni-present.
People rarely bother to consider that what made Hitler scary was that a lot of the nations he invaded had some resistance by patriots, but ultimatly wound up falling into lock step behind him. France for example arguably surrendered TWICE during "World War II". They surrendered to Hitler's invasion because there was so much support for him within the country, while there was a resistance, by and large the French more or less embraced the Nazis. Then they surrendered again a second time to the allies, when they saw the wind changing and figured that even if Hitler won they were going to get crushed by the allies going through them. The way the occupation of France is presented is sort of a diplomatic fiction, and people rarely learn things the way they were explained to me (which is kind of the point I guess). At any rate, this is apparently one of the big reasons why there is so much bad blood with France, and where the whole "surrender monkeys" thing comes from (The "joke" being that France is the only country to surrender twice in the same war). Of course to be fair, France's policies *DID* prevent it from being as badly trashed as it would have been if it had fought it out.
All arguements about specifics aside, the point being that Bin Ladin was never a guy who could rally the entire world around him. Yes he WAS almost a living god to people in The Middle East, but hardly an international phenomena the same way. To be like Hitler, he'd
have to have had a level of global support and popularity far beyond what we're seeing.
Hitler, The Kaisers, Napoleon, Stalin, Pol Pot... Bin Ladin is a bad guy, but he's never been on that level. I suppose if the decapitation strike on the US had succeeded, with the WTC, Pentagon, Capital and/or White House all destroyed, followed by some kind of massive Muslim uprising, he might have gotten there, but right now his big claim to fame is a partially successful attack, and bringing about what is arguably the longest running police action in history.
Not every generation has a "big bad", and really Bin Ladin might be the biggest bad guy of the current generation (so far) but he's not that big a deal in the scope of history.
Really, I think in the long run Bin Ladin is going to be MOST famous due to Obama's incompetant handling of the current situation. Simply put, even if he's gone, we have no evidence that the US actually got him, despite the claims. Obama destroying the body (or so he claims) and only having some phorographs and DNA testing reports (all of which could easily be faked by a goverment) ensure that people are going to spend the rest of time wondering if this was all a political stunt for the upcoming election, or if we really did get the guy. There is literally no way to be sure in today's age of data falsification, the one thing that could have provided actual proof, having apparently been destroyed.
Time will tell what happens, but I think Bin Ladin is the new JFK conspiricy.
