German Ignorance

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by MrFun
It doesn't matter what ethincity you are or what part of the world you live in -- as long as you're human with some sense of decency and integrity, you can appreciate the magnitude of the horror of the Holocaust.

Sure, just like people appreciate the magnitude of the horror of the Mongols ransacking Bagdad, or the abomination of Alexander the Great razing cities and enslaving dozens of thousands of people. Oh well.

[Drake Tungsten]

Darling, you can even put it in your sig line if it gives you a hard-on.

Only complete douchebags do that sort of thing.

[alva]

* cough * Africa * cough *

[Joseph]

Originally posted by MrFun


A couple of isolated incidents!?!?



The Vietnamese in the village of My Lai certainly did not deserve what they got.

I will agree to a point. The point is that someone from that village shot and kill one or two of our guys as they were leaving the village. So instead of going down the path aways and calling in Art., or air support, the Lt. said lets do it. The rest is history.

That point was completely loss after Lt Calley (spelling) and his men did to My Lai.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by GePap
at Mua'dib for making sure his manners utterly destroyed his arguement, was far as his arguement ever existed.

But there will come a time when German kids no longer really knmow much about the Holocaust. Lets not kid ourselves, time moves on, and you simply can;t endlessly pontificate about an event, no matter the event, without it losing all emotional meaning.

Then there is the added problem that the Holocaust is only one of an endless series of horrors man has influicted upon man, and all the "never again"'s chanted have actually done nothing to prevent it from happening again (at least two obvious genocides since the Holocaust).

There is finally of course the problem that the Holocaust is really a Euro-American centric disaster. As power shifts from the West eastward the value of the memory of the Holocaust will diminish. The people's of Asia and Africa have no real emotional connection to the Holocaust whatsoever.

For once I will agree with GP.

10 or so years from now, there will be no WW I Vets living. An 18 year old in 1918 is now 105.

20 years from now there will just a few WW II Vets living. An 18 year old in 1945 is now 78.

25 years from now there will just a few Korea Vets living.
An 18 year old in 1953 is now 70

30 years from now there wll be just a few Vietnam Vets living. An 18 year old in 1973 is now 50.

If I still here 19 years from now, I will feel very, very lucky. I will 80 and I was discharge 90 days before my Ship the USS Navarro APA-215 went to Nam, and I was in Boat Group. The div that take the Marines to the shore and lands them. Some of my buddy were shot at, but none were hit.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by alva
* cough * Africa * cough *

yes -- the Rwanda genocide is another unspeakable horror

[pchang]

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, because napalming 4 million civilians is a very civilized thing to do

4 million civilians were the total killed. Not even close to a majority of them were killed by napalm. In fact, many were killed by N. Vietnam.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, because napalming 4 million civilians is a very civilized thing to do

Obviously it's not even on the same level as the Holocaust, but you said she was a high-schooler? 15-16 maybe? Can we really expect her to know the difference? If she was a well-educated grown-up maybe... and as others have said, Germans are very well educated in this respect.

Either way, the Holocaust was the darkest hour in the history of mankind and Vietnam or any other war doesn't compare, there's no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean make every other war the epithomy of all that is good and right. The Americans did commit horrors in Vietnams, just because the Holocaust was worse doesn't make that any less true. Americans ought to be ashamed of what their countrymen did in Vietnam, just as the Germans should be ashamed of WWII, and as the Vietnamese should for their countrymen (and as such pretty much every nation has something to be ashamed of -- I feel I'm more a citizen of the world or Europe than of the Netherlands, but I feel deeply, deeply, deeply ashamed of how my fellow countrymen stood by and did nothing -- and in a way even assisted -- the Serbs during the massacre of Screbrenica, for one thing).

But in reality the only thing many Americans are ashamed of with regard to Vietnam is the fact that they lost

When Americans talk about the causualties of that war, they always talk about the 59,000 Americans that died, but I rarely catch anyone talking about the 3-4 million Vietnamese civilian casualties. I also find it extremely disturbing how Americans in Vietnam are usually depicted as heroes and the good guys. The line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" is generally regarded as a great movie line (even voted best line in the history of cinema according to one poll) and frequently paraphrased in all sorts of context as a heroic thing to say -- how differently would we react if someone would say "I love the smell of Zyklon B in the morning"...

The Germans generally deal with the horrors of their ancestors in a very mature and responsible way, it's an integral part of their education. That is much more than what can be said of the Americans -- that's one point where that kid isn't completely wrong...

Great post.

Though I do agree with pchang about the napalm thing.

In any case, most Americans have just sort of forgotten everything that has happened since World War 2 (It was 60 years ago guys!!!!! ) and equate all war with being superman, saving the girl, and Norman Rockwell paintings.

It seems no matter what we do, we're always viewed as being on the right side, by our own population, even when we do stupid things like claim to save a people from being tortured, and then go torture some of them.


Regarding Frontline, I find them to be one of the best programs out there, "Rumsfeld's War" was an AWESOME episode.

I think the clip of the German teenager was designed as a teaching clip, to make Americans think about our own role in the world. The bottom line is that our sh1t stinks just as bad as anyone else's. Audie Murphy punched out evil Nazis 60 years ago.


Here is a question, which atrocity is worse:

1) Rwanda genocide
2) Jewish holocost
3) Roman destruction of Carthage (complete annihilation of an entire civilization)

(The Roman destruction of Gaul was also pretty bad).

Finally, I find most Germans to be more globally aware and respective than most other nations in general. Though keep in mind my bias comes from interactions with Germans who have a high level of education and a great deal of travelling outside of Germany.

[Ted Striker]

Rumsfeld's War:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/

[pchang]

I just don't like exageration in things like this. All the exageration I saw on the other side was already countered.

The classic question is: Do the ends justify the means?

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
The bottom line is that our sh1t don't stink.

QFT!

[Muad'Dib]

Tiny little question though, out of curiosity: how many of those friends you speak of are Vietnamese?

Bravo Locutus, someone actually had the courage to ask me an important question and actually wants an answer.

Before I answer, we need to clarify what a friend is.

I was close to professor in my college days. And he asked how many friends I had. I said lots. He responded, "How many of them would bail you out of jail if you were arrested say for murder or for rape." I laughed and said, "Are you serious?" "Yes," he replied. I sat there contemplating my answer. So I said, "Unless bail is really, really low, maybe 5. "Well bail in those cases is never low and you know that. Stop avoiding the question and give me your answer. "None," I said.
"Then they're not friends," he replied, "they're just acquaintances." "Come on," I said, "most of them would take a bullet or pull me out of a burning building. Just because a person doesn't have that kind money is irrelevant." "A true friend would find a way to come up with the money," he said.

So back to the question at hand. In college, I had two acquaintances. One male, Tran, and one female, Sung.
Tran, was VC. Sung was the daughter of an ARVN general. You'll all love this one, we all lived on the same dorm floor. Sung, on the women side. Tran, next door to mine. Needless to say, Sung and Tran didn't get along. Sung's father was killed in '75. I found Tran very interesting. Here was the enemy, living in America, and getting an education. Tran, was eleven years old in '73 fighting Americans. All he knew was one day, the Viet Cong came to his village, rounded up all the males and made them fight Americans. I asked him how many he killed, he refused to say. But I saw the look in his eyes when I asked him, and I knew he killed. Tran and his family came over during the boat lifts in '78. His sister drowned coming over.

Anymore questions.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Muad'Dib
Anymore questions.

Yes, would you care to answer all the other posts or are you just going to ignore them for your own sake?

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Originally posted by Ted Striker
The bottom line is that our sh1t don't stink.

QFT!

I forgot to add a word.

Let me go back and edit that one.

Should read: "Our **** stinks just as bad as anyone else's."

[Muad'Dib]

I don't like being redundant. I've explained myself in my posts. I suggest you go back and re-read all 5 pages.