--- Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How strange that US soldiers misbehaving like they > did in the Abu Graihb > prison (for all I know also in all other totally > shielded or even to us > unknown prisons as well) are somehow exempted from > this point of view.
Gee, Sonja, let's count up the ways in which the situation is different. Here's the most important one: The US government is prosecuting the people involved in Abu Ghraib. The German government was, of course, conducting the Holocaust as a matter of policy. Hmmm, here's another one. The American people, when they found out about the atrocity, reacted with horror and demanded that the people involved meet justice. Most Germans (indeed, it would be fair to say most Europeans) reacted to the Holocaust on a spectrum that ran from mild disfavor to wholehearted approval. Indeed, even today, as you so kindly demonstrate, many will do anything to diminish the culpability of the people involved and trivialize the horror of what they did by comparing it to far lesser events. > Probably because they are what they are. US soldiers > acting under > orders. So what made *them* do it. Are they also > basically and > intrinsically evil, like all German soldiers were > evil, like the whole > of the German population was assumed to be > knowledgeble of the facts and > thus basically evil? I mean the question stays the > same, because the > situation actually is the same. Abuse of imprisoned > defenseless peoples > for no other reason than that it was commanded by > superiors, known to > all who ever were near that scene and did nothing > about it. Killing them > is only the next step. The only difference this time > is that pictures > were taken, lots of horrible pictures, and that > those got out into the > world in mega speed time and onto a really big and > interested audience. Actually, the difference is obvious to anyone not desperate to slander Americans and excuse Nazis. Obviously members of the American civilian population did not know what was happening in Iraq simultaneously with the events. It involved a (relatively) small number of people, thousands of miles away. OTOH, the historical evidence that most Germans knew what was happening in the Holocaust is overwhelming. It involved millions of their neighbors either executed in place or sent in trains to death camps very near their own countries, guarded by people drawn from their communities. It went on for years and involved millions of people. In fact, we know from the diaries of a lone Jew who managed to survive the war in Berlin that he was able to _name the death camps_. He knew where they were and what they were doing, despite the fact that he was an ordinary citizen with no special knowledge whatsoever. He knew because everyone knew. > > I wonder what would have happened if pictures of > concentration camps had > made it to as wide a public as the pictures of the > Abu Graihb prison in > as short a timespan, and before it really got > abominable. I think the fact that you think there was a time "before" the concentration camps were abominable tells us everything we need to know, actually. > Then agian > Somalia was > basically played out in front of cameras and nobody > much cared for > people being shot or being hacked to pieces back > then. Well, Sonja, if you mean by nobody "nobody in Europe" then you're right. If you mean, "nobody in the world" you're obviously wrong, because I have friends in the American military who were deployed to Mogadishu because we _did_ care about what happened (the starvation, I mean) and tried to do something to stop it. > > Sometimes there is something to say for a world > where ever person can be > held accountable for all of their actions by > everybody else during all > of the time. > > Sonja There absolutely is. How about I hold France responsible for actively abetting the Sudanese government in its genocide in Darfur, and the Rwandan government in its genocide as well? Note - not sitting on its hands and doing nothing. The US has done that often enough, and I'm ashamed of that fact. But actually _helping_ the governments involved. That might be a good start, come to think of it. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
