If Mayor Michael Bloomberg is to New York – and by extension the United States – what French general Philippe Pétain was to his country in WWII, we have cause for great concern. France was in desperate need of a leader after the Nazi invasion and called its greatest WWI hero out of retirement to help in 1940.
Pétain, upon assessing the situation, decided that it was best to surrender to Hitler – without calling it surrender – than it was to fight. He proceeded to sign an armistice that served to forfeit more than half of France to the Nazis – including Paris – in exchange for a territory in the central part of the country, known as Vichy. Pétain led the Vichy government primarily as a figurehead, more so beginning in 1942, and collaborated with the Germans. The government also passed anti-Semitic laws and rounded up French, Spanish, and Eastern European Jews who were deported to German concentration camps.
In fairness to a true historical account, Pétain was 84 years old and hardly capable of being the savior his countrymen so desperately wanted him to be. Defending France after the invasion, however untenable, was what Pétain was charged with doing. Instead, he sold out his country to save his own skin; he was convicted of treason after the war.
The United States was attacked on February 26th, 1993 when the World Trade Center was bombed for the first time. It was an act of war perpetrated by an enemy whose stated goal is to bring down western civilization.
While Bloomberg was not the mayor of New York at the time, he did have a rather embarrassing encounter in late 2009 with a likely co-conspirator in that bombing, Siraj Wahhaj. Mayor Bloomberg met with Muslim leaders on November 11th at City Hall and attempted to deny that Wahhaj was among those in attendance until a reporter challenged him. Said Bloomberg when pressed,
That one (Wahhaj). Yes. We have to talk to everybody. That’s what dialogue is all about. That’s how you prevent tragedies.
It’s quite likely that Pétain, when called away from his job as ambassador to Spain in 1940 to deal with the Nazis in France, shared similar sentiment. The historical record indicates that upon assessing the situation, he virtually deemed national defense a useless proposition.
Bloomberg is the mayor of a city known as “Ground Zero” in the Islamist war on western civilization and his position is much less tenuous in 2010 than was Pétain’s in 1940. Yet, the mayor seems to be channeling Pétain with increasing frequency as the ground zero mosque project, known as the Cordoba Initiative, trudges ahead.
Before the Times Square bomber was apprehended, Bloomberg – without substantiation – speculated that it was probably somebody who “doesn’t like the health care bill for example” and then was quick to come to the aid of Islamists after Faisal Shahzad was apprehended by claiming,
We will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers.
Now, Bloomberg has inexplicably become indignant at Americans who have a problem with being invaded. Some might identify such indignation as a sign of collaboration with the enemy, which also carries echoes of Pétain.
Make no mistake; the Cordoba Initiative is an invasion, albeit subtler than the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 or either of the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001 respectively. Perhaps a reason for the subtlety is that this enemy is not yet as confident as was Hitler’s army.
Ironically, Islamists eagerly attempted to collaborate with the Nazis in WWII because of a shared hatred of the Jews. When talking about Pétain and Bloomberg, intimidation was and is the likely motivator.
Pétain had no leverage in 1940 while Bloomberg acts like he has none in 2010. If the New York City mayor continues on this course, his perception could become our reality.
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