There's a handy debating tool called Godwin's Law that Sean Spicer, Donald Trump's press secretary, really ought to look up. Invented by American author Mike Godwin in 1990, it's generally used to mean the first person to introduce a Hitler comparison during an argument automatically loses the debate.
Spicer lost dramatically when he was forced into a humiliating apology for saying even Hitler didn't use chemical weapons during World War II. The Nazi death camps ('Holocaust centres', as Spicer, increasingly terror-stricken at the scale of his mis-step, called them) proved him wrong. Even if, to be charitable, he was talking only about battlefield use, he wasn't quite right: they did use them on a small scale against the Russians and had large stockpiles that only technical difficulties and fear of Allied retaliation prevented them from deploying.
This is just the latest example of Spicer becoming the story – never the right position for a press secretary, and of a piece with the Trump's dysfunctional and incompetent administration so far. With reports of furious in-fighting among the US president's inner circle, it's questionable how long the present team – Spicer among them – will hold together.
This is not, however – unless you're a political geek – the most interesting aspect of the present furore.
Spicer's inept Hitler reference was designed to win support for Trump's missile strike on the Syrian air force base from which the sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhun was launched. Even Hitler wouldn't have done that, he said. So, by extension, Bashar al Assad, Syria's president, is worse than Hitler.
No one should be in any doubt about Assad's moral status. He has overseen mass torture and executions, the devastation of huge swathes of his country, the indiscriminate use of barrel bombs against civilians, and, yes, poison gas.
But weighing these crimes against the facts of World War II history is not the point. The comparison is designed to justify any and every military action against the Assad regime. Because as everyone knows, if you're worse than Hitler you deserve no mercy. There's no point in talking to you or negotiating with you. You are not really a human being; you are vermin, and you must be crushed, for the good of all humanity. The only response to you is total war until you are defeated.
The trouble is that things just aren't that simple, politically, militarily or morally. And ratcheting up the rhetoric, as Spicer has attempted to do – with calamitous ineptitude – is not really a useful contribution to a long-term strategic solution to the problems of the region. It softens up public opinion for just the sort of military adventurism that arguably led to the present calamity in the first place – after all, Assad is worse than Hitler.
Furthermore – and this, for Christians – is where the red flags really start flapping – demonising your enemy is never justified. It closes down conversation. It blocks any possibility of dialogue. It denies the possibility of grace. It implies that all the right is on one side, and all the wrong on the other – and once a cautious, humble and self-aware attempt to do something positive to bring peace becomes a crusade driven by a white-hot conviction of one's own righteousness, all the devils in hell will flock to the cause.
Spicer said a foolish thing. But behind his folly is an idea that has the potential to do enormous harm. It mustn't go unchallenged.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
