the H word!

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The H Word

by Ted Rall. Via Cryptome

10 thoughts on “the H word!”

  1. I’ll probably be rund down and hounded for saying this, but here goes.

    Yes, 6 million Jews went to the death camps and never returned. As did a few million Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and others considered undesirable by the Nazi German government.

    As did millions of others under the jurisidiction of the Soviet Union.

    As did millions more under the purview of the Chinese Communist state.

    As did untold numbers of American Indians.

    As did numbers of Palestinians left to a refugee or occupied status by Israel and the Arab League nations.

    Maybe the point is being missed – it ain’t about the Jews. It’s about basic decency, civility and humanity on everyone’s part.

    If Israel’s check was spent on actually improving the quality of life instead of military assitance grants, it might at least be a more rational world.

  2. I googled “world genocides” and found this handy-dandy list at this site (and this list doesn’t include Rwanda, and others):

    Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69) 49,000,000 (“great leap forward” and “cultural revolution”)

    Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1934-39) 13,000,000 (the purges)

    Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)

    Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians WWII)

    Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000

    Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)

    Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000

    Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915) 1,200,000 Armenians

    Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000

    Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000

    Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000

    Suharto (East Timor, 1976-98) 600,000

    Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000

    Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1971) vs Bangladesh 500,000

    Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000

    Mullah Omar – Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000

    Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000

    Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000

    Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ?

    Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000

    Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000

    Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-96) 180,000

    Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000

    Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) 100,000

    Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ?

    Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (vietnamese civilians)

    Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83) 70,000

    Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000

    Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) 40,000

    Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947) 30,000 (popular uprising)

    Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 (dissidents executed)

    Francisco Franco (Spain) 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)

    Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000

    Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000

    Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) 20,000

    Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957) 10,000 (war in Algeria)

    Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000

    Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001) 3,500

    Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) 3,000

    Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06) 2,000

  4. Wow, an interesting list. I’m humbled to note that I don’t recognize all the names and couldn’t place all these countries on a map. But it does include Rwanda:
    Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000

  5. The thing that makes genocide so terrible and separates it from that laundry list is that it is a determined attempt to kill an entire identified “group” of humans.

    To characterise what Osama Bin Laden accomplished, in a single attack for the most part, and without regard for the origin of his targets, as being the same as what the Nazis, with collaboration from such uprights as Joseph Kennedy and (depending on who you hear it from) the Pope, did over several years in a deliberate attempt to exterminate cultural and religious subgroups is to miss the point of the word.

    I have been told that more Poles (mostly Catholic) died in the death camps than Jews. It doesn’t change the fact that the Nazis were bastards.

    And to suggest a connection between American support for Israel in the twenty-first century and some sort of residual guilt over the Holocaust seems simplistic, to say the least.

    American support for Israel is rooted in a half-century of foreign policy, in America’s former self-characterisation as “protector of the weak”, and in a powerful pro-Israeli lobby.

  6. Ah, but bin Laden does target selectively; he’s only interested in attacking “The Great Satan” by which he means Western secularism and Christianity. That he is choosing a philosophical label rather than an ethnic one does not mean that this is not attempted genocide, anymore than the Crusades were not. And his organization continues to attack. Given the size of the mindshare 9/11 has, it’s fair to list it; the Charge of the Light Brigade wasn’t on the scale of Passchendaele, but it casts a long shadow.

    There is a connection between the Holocaust and American support for Israel, but it has much more to do with the fact that the critical states of New York, California and Florida have disporportionate numbers of Jewish voters than anything else. But residual guilt is something that plays very, very well in the media and to that extent is has been and remains a factor. Ask “where does the half-century of foreign policy come from?”

  7. Bin Laden’s goals are less about religion than politics. Secularism and Christianity just happen to be two things he associates with the United States.

    In the September terror attacks, Bin Laden’s actions killed scores of Jews, Christians, Muslims and not a few Hindu, and I’m certain a wiccan or two. The attacks were nonselective.

    The Nazis went through a deliberate buraucratic process, including such stupidities as the “nose measurer”, to identify Jews, segregate them, then collect and kill them. That they also practiced political repression doesn’t change that.

    Bin Laden would have been just as happy had the planes been driven into, say, the CN Tower. Or a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Abu Dhabi.

    The more chilling thing about this debate, though, is this: You never even hear about the sucessful ones.

  8. Have to disagree. The target that day was not the United States as a nation, it was the Western idea of secular capitalism, and the United States as a world leader and idea. He wouldn’t blow up anything in Canada because it wouldn’t dishearten anyone but Canadians. Attacking the US’s massive symbols of world economic dominance, along with their military HQ and White House (failed) got the attention of the entire world, and did actually shake their faith in America.

    You can be quite sure that more than one Saudi was killed in the 9/11 attacks as well, and that bin Laden regarded them as secular appeasniks who should die for dealing with the Great Satan. Don’t forget, some of his family lived in New York and worked in those buildings, too.

    That bin Laden does it a bit at a time rather than all at once shouldn’t be taken for a sign that he’s not genocidal. He’s just doing it by a thousand cuts rather than all at once.

    Speaking of which, I note that the Indian Wars of the US are not listed, although they come under the heading as well.

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