Questions for the anti-war people

Interesting

Published on May 11, 2004 By Draginol In Current Events

Some interesting stuff over at VodkaPundit.

The British invented the concentration camp, as a way of dealing with enemy women and children during the Boer Wars. Germany invented the industrial death factory. France invented the modern subjugation of Arab lands by Western powers. Are these the reasons why Europeans are screaming so loudly today about "mere" (by their own inventive standards) psychological abuse?

The first court-martial for abuse of Iraqi prisoners will begin in less than two weeks. The Nuremburg Trials took less than two years to convene. Already, some are calling for the removal (if not impeachment) of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Why, almost 50 years after far worse atrocities in Algeria, has France still not put Charles de Gaulle on trial?

In fact, France let de Gaulle create and lead the Fifth Republic. Given the situation in Algeria, why?

Read the whole thing.

Comments

Muggaz

on May 11, 2004

Basically you are just pointing out that America as a nation is stupid because they haven't learnt from the mistakes of the past...

no one blames America for the state of the Middle East, I personally hold England and France responsible... the blame game doesn't get anyone anywhere though Brad...

All we can do is a people is make mistakes and learn from them, otherwise, oneday, someone will make the mistake of all mistakes, and it will be all over Red-Rover...

I am not an American hating Zealot, I am a war hating Zealot... It just happens to be that Americans come accross to me as war mongers...

The past is no defence.. ever.. yet you constantly bring it up, looking for some form of justification for starting or going to another war... It makes me upset.

BAM!!!

Sherye Hanson

on May 11, 2004

Shouldn't we expect more from ourselves that what Europeans did?

6969jimbo6969

on May 12, 2004

"Anti war" is such an arcane term. To war is human, to make peace divine, I say. Nonetheless, that is our calling now, at least if We want Stardocket to continue to have a marketplace where people are capable of plugging in and buying product. Can you feel what I'm saying. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the work of, say, Franz Fanon---"Wretched of the Earth"---has to recognize that Algeria was to France a much worse death dealing imperial labyrinthe than Vietnam was to us. It was the most ethnocentric, Gallic-superiority, nightmare laboratory imagineable.

There are several reasons why the outcry against imperialism now is quicker and more focused and powerful. Suffice it to say that people are not going to eat the shit of the powerful, and, more and more the thugs and whores and crooks we appoint to do our dirty work end up like Adolf---damn!! excuse me, I keep getting that mixed up---I mean, Saddam Hussein, who was our creature for three decades and then turned into a Frankenstein monster who even now may end up slaying us in absentia. I wrote an essay on this topic in 1990, and many more prescient than I am have been writing about it since at least the early days of Herr Eichman---damn, the Alzheimer's again---I mean Sir Kissinger.

WE AS A PEOPLE ARE NOT THE TARGET OF MOST PEOPLE AROUND THE PLANET DISGUSTED WITH THE U.S. MILITARY. HOWEVER, AS MORE AND MORE WE TRUMPET IGNORANCE AND DISINGENUOUS NAIVETE AND AHISTORICAL FANTASY AS PIR POLICY AND PURPOSE, MORE AND MORE WILL WE BECOME A TARGET FOR THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD. AS THE ESTIMABLE MICHAEL MOORE SAID IN NOVEMBER, 2002, "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND YET. THAT'S WHY THEY CALL IT WAR. THE OTHER SIDE'S GONNA SHOOT BACK."

russellmz2

on May 12, 2004

whether france, germany, polynesia, or the country formerly known as burma ever did anything bad is totally and utterly irrelevant to the fact that american soldiers have committed abuses against prisoners in our custody. it's not just europeans that are screaming over this little fact. i have been hanging around 3 or 4 centrist forums and have yet to hear anyone of reasonable writing skill or intelligence call for bush's impeachment.

i don't care what france's history of prisoner abuse is. all i care is that our history has been tarnished. some people will think a few trials and court martials will blot away the stain on our honor and reputation. but it will take years, maybe decades before before that happens.

Solitair

on May 12, 2004

Well I supported the war, but I'll comment anyway.

We are not living in the past. Modern expectations are MUCH higher than in the past. Yes the English, French and many others have countless sad actions in their history, but this does not justify comparing modern actions against their standards. Modern actions need to be compared against modern standards.

1st court martials begin in less than 2 weeks? => Abuses first reported over 1 year ago and not stopped
Removal of Bush? => bit of an extreme reaction.
Removal of Runsfeld? => He has some serious questions to answer. What did he know, when did he know it, and what actions did he take.

Paul.

kingbee

on May 12, 2004

first, theres a substantial gulf between anti-war and anti-ill-conceived-attempted-regime-change-in-iraq-debacle but here goes.

'industrial death factory' is a bit too euphemistic a description for for places like buchenwald, auschwitz, treblinka, etc. britain is as culpable as france--if not more so--as far as subjugation of arab lands. we've not yet surpassed the brit record for ridiculously poor administration of iraq, but not for lack of trying.

'mere'? you are (i hope) better than that--even if it this really was limited to psychological abuse. it's clearly not however. last i heard, someone is going to be tried for at least one homicide. its still up in the air whether the others qualify as manslaughter cases. there are a full series of photos, accodring to seymour hersh who's seen them, document an attack on the prisoner seen in the photo released last weekend by the two large dos also seen in that pic.

indicting degaulle now would add a whole new meaning to habeus corpus?

with your questions out of the way, i gotta point out the real issue here isnt which country is not doing things as well as we do...nor as well as we wish we do. nor is it they do it so we can get away with it too. its something i tried to address in an article last week: an 'as good as'" america isnt. its not even close. not for me anyway. nor, i suspect, for you nor for anyone else who has more than just an inkling of what it could/should be. all that as good as/no worse than/slightly better than stuff is beside the point and not worth wasting time we could be using to make america be the america we believe it to be

Draginol

on May 12, 2004

No, Muggaz, you're not anti-war. You're just anti-American.

You're okay with the slaughter of Americans. You're just not okay with the US responding to it. We didn't ask for 9/11. We didn't deserve it. And now we're doing what we think we have to do to reduce the likelyhood of future 9/11's or worse.

The point of that person's questions was to educate people into realizing that war is nasty business. And in war, ALL WARS, nasty things happen. That doesn't make it acceptable. But one needs to have a little perspective on these things.

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