The Washington, D.C., public school teacher who instructed a sixth-grade class to write a paper comparing President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler should be fired immediately, a Bush White House staffer told
Newsmax TV on Monday.
"I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat — whoever you are, comparing a U.S. president to Adolf Hitler is unacceptable, and that teacher needs to go now," Bradley Blakeman, a Georgetown University professor of politics and public policy, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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Blakeman joined Berliner for a wide-ranging discussion of the two commanders-in-chief entrusted with America's safety since 9/11 — his former boss and President Barack Obama.
But his harshest comments were directed at a teacher whose
Bush-versus-Hitler homework assignment left many kids' parents aghast.
Both the teacher and the District of Columbia public school officials apologized for the exercise and said it was inappropriate to compare a U.S. president to the Nazi dictator who instigated a global war and systematically slaughtered millions of Jews in Europe.
Blakeman, who is Jewish and served on the board that oversaw construction of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said that he was also reacting as someone who has spoken personally with Holocaust survivors and visited the infamous Nazi death camps in Europe.
"I am sickened to the core that … kids would be asked to write a paper — a vile paper — against not only a past president, but the office of the president," he said. "Comparing the office of the president, and George W. Bush in particular, to Adolf Hitler is beyond the pale.
And this teacher needs to be fired, and these kids need to be taught correctly."
Blakeman said that the episode is an example of the liberal bias pervading public education and teacher's unions. He said the leftist bent of educators as well as the media forces conservatives to fight battles over history, politics, policy and ideas "with one hand tied behind our back."
Blakeman also addressed President Barack Obama's handling of the Islamic State (ISIS) and its violent spread across Syria and Iraq.
He said the president's speech on Wednesday detailing a plan of attack against ISIS was curiously similar to his predecessor's language, even though Obama ran in 2008 promising to end the Bush administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"There's a schizophrenia to this president as a candidate and then as president of the United States," said Blakeman.
"He's returning to the principles that he was so against in trying to fight terrorism because he knows that what George Bush did in hindsight is exactly what he needs to do now [and] that he wasn’t doing as president in the last six years," said Blakeman.
Blakeman said that where Bush described "the world as it was," Obama ran and, for six years, governed in the world "as he wished it to be."
"President Bush correctly predicted … that if you precipitously withdraw from an area that we were able to secure, that if America has no presence, what we fought for is going to be turned around," said Blakeman. "Because you’re going to invite the very forces, and worse, back in to an area that we were able to secure.
"So we’re seeing in Iraq, Afghanistan," he said. "The entire Middle East is in meltdown."
The result is a president "forced to react," said Blakeman.
"This isn't a a visionary president," he said. "This isn't a president who leads. This is a president who reacts, and now … even the most dovish of his own party are saying, 'Mr. President, you must act.' "
But Blakeman questioned whether the president has enough credibility left with the American to be entrusted with the fight against ISIS and other anti-Western jihadists.
He also doubted whether Obama could persuade the country of the necessity to go to war against its enemies.
"You don’t win a war against an adversary as brutal and as vicious as ISIS unless the American people understand what the threat is and will allow troops to go in," said Blakeman. "But the president is not leading us, he is reacting to events as they occur."