From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 21:20:44 MDT
Avatar Polymorph writes (I think---in his post the attribution
isn't entirely clear)
> Clearly war crimes encompass the deliberate bombing of civilians en masse
> regardless of the cultural parameters. In this regard, both Hitler and
> Churchill are war criminals.
It remains to be seen IMO whether Churchill should be regarded
as a war criminal. Certainly I'm starting to see some evidence
in this discussion that such was the case. For me, it comes
down to
A. Did Churchill realize that there was no military objective
to bombing Dresden (except possibly to instill terror)?
B. Did Churchill alone authorize the bombing?
If the answers to A and B are yes, then he ought to be
considered guilty of war crimes.
> So too are Truman, Kissinger and Nixon.
How do you figure?
> [The] US bombing of Vietnam (1 million killed)
This is entirely false. This is the sort of leftist lie
that we need to completely expunge.
While North Vietnamese *military* losses to American and South
Vietnamese forces are about indeed about one million, as for
evil, ponder this: "In the first two years after the fall of
Saigon (1975-1977), there were almost twice as many total
*civilian* fatalities in Southeast Asia---from the Cambodian
holocaust, outright executions, horrendous conditions in
concentration camps, and failed escapes by refugees---as all
those incurred during ten years of major American involvement
(1965-74)", p. 425, "Carnage and Culture", by Victor Davis
Hanson. Note the contrast between "two" years and "ten" years.
So don't blame the Americans of being war criminals
when they were in effect attempting to *prevent*
Communist atrocities. The narrations of so, so
many Vietnamese are so consistent and so convincing
that even American leftists will be persuaded if they
just take the time to read them.
> Two wrongs never make a right. Nothing excuses killing children, wives,
> non-combatant males and pensioners unless the concept of "war crime" is
> thrown out the door completely.
I agree that unnecessary killing is unnecessary, and
therefore wrong. But I am also growing weary of those
who appear to think that it's perfectly all right for
seventeen year old boys to die by the thousands, because
"they signed up for it" or some equally stupid reasoning.
War is not a game that makes it okay for some people to
die and not others. Every single death is a terrible
tragedy, and the deaths of millions is a statistic (which
shows you the true horror in statistics) and a wise but
ruthless 20th century despot once pointed out.
> Bombing civilians in civilian areas clearly has no purpose
> other than to kill them. It is not about "depleting morale"
> or "reducing the war effort of the enemy" - it's about
> killing defenseless enemy civilians.
While I basically agree, remember Eternal Truth No. 1:
Nothing is Simple. Bombing enemy cities in World War
Two sometimes had the effect of drawing Luftwaffe planes
away from the front, and thus enabling quicker Allied
victories, and so shortening the war. All I care about
is (a) winning (b) minimizing human losses. Both are
absolutely necessary when fighting some enemies, and it
should be squarely faced.
> http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable.htm
>
> Note how many died in the Soviet Union and China AFTER World War Two, in
> South East Asia and then more recently how many millions have died in
> Africa. On a minor note, note how the plight of Mayan Indians has attracted
> little attention in the West.
What point do you have to make about the Mayans?
> It is a useful exercise to simply grade
> genocide post WWII country by country with no cultural "blinkers". In
> general, all one can say is that Stalin, Hitler and Mao inflicted a lot of
> it, but that the Russians have suffered the most (one in six or so dying
> from 1930 to 1960).
Yes.
> It is stunning that no one in the West noticed that so many people
> were "missing" in Russia (that is, our spies) - was it reported
> at all in the press?
The reason was that Western Leftists did not want to hear
about bad things happening in the Soviet Union. It was
the Worker's Paradise to them, and they truly loved the
idea of Socialism. And when one loves an idea, or a nation,
or close relatives, one is all to often not likely to listen
the way that one should.
> Even with a totalitarian state, the fact that so many
> people are missing in a nation of dozens of millions
> surely couldn't be missed?
The facts about the Gulag Archipelago did not become widespread
in the West until the publication of Solzhenitsyn's massive,
irrefutable writings. So by the end of the seventies, only
the most die-hard leftists in the West were still denying
Soviet totalitarian mass deaths. (Even here, though, it is
incorrect to use the terms "genocide" and "murder". That's
what Hitler did to Jews and Stalin to Kulaks---most of the
Soviet Union's megadeaths after World War II were political
reprisals against individuals that began as simple
imprisonment, with no definite plans for death.)
Lee
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