check to have links open new windows

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

USA, Nazi Germany - Not Equivalent

A post on another thread led me to want to (be a windbag) talk a little more than would be appropriate in a comment so I started this new thread-
DP-
I do wonder though - when I am working - if all of us sods just going through the daily grind aren't out of step with what history may consider a priority: namely trying to stop the American empire from killing more people in the name of whatever.
Citizens of Germany kept on keeping on with daily life despite the horrors going on in their back yard during the Holocaust. It's not as hard to fathom such a blind turning when I notice how unwilling I am to stop my regular life and dedicate myself to fighting injustice.

I don't think that we are morally equivalent to German Nazis. It is an entirely different situation. We, (the USA) do things wrong, we blunder around in the dark and step on people. Sometimes the people in power here do things they ought not do. Sometimes the rich use their influence to get richer on the backs (and the blood) of the poor. While this is despicable behavior, I have to point out it is signifigantly different from systematically "purifying" a nation of undesirable people. We should also remember that even good Germans who might have stood up against what was happening were kept quiet at the end of a gun.

That said, yes, we are responsible for the crimes commited in our name. What is done is not a result of our leaders being evil men. They are decent men (for the most part) who sometimes (usually) excercise terrible judgement.

We should stand up and shout down those who believe bombing other people makes us safer. Did it make Muslims around the world safer when men bombed us in their name? I remember how angry I was when New York was attacked, I wanted retribution. (still waiting for Osama's head on a stake) Likewise, should we expect it to make us safer when people are bombed in our name? Are they not men like us? Will they not cry for vengeance as well? We are not the only people with bombs and bad judgement you know, and it doesnt matter if it's in a backpack or a million-dollar missile, it does the same thing.

It is easy to forget that there are people like us under those bombs. In Albuquerque, I would see the different fighter planes fly overhead, practicing their attack runs, and sometimes I would break down, because I could empathise with someone like me being on the wrong end of that terrible weapon because he lived in the wrong part of the world and had to go to work that day, or someone on his street was an enemy of the USA.

I had to chuckle when I read "dedicate myself to fighting injustice." Not that it isnt a noble idea, I just couldn't picture myself in tights and a cape. It's interesting that all people everywhere hate unfairness and injustice until they are on the winning side of the equation. At that point it becomes "the way it has to be" and "a necessary evil," or worst of all, "not something I think about."

So the question is- What can we do?

Do we vote for one set of oligarchs over another? Even if the last elections went the other way, Americans would still be dying in Iraq and Iraqis would still suffer under the religious extremism that our invasion brought to the surface there. Do we go to places where US policy has made a mess in our name and try to fix it? How? Is taking advantage of a mother's grief and camping out in front of W's vacation home going to help? Do we go to church and stand up and shout when the preacher supports war?

It's hard to find a way to make any difference at all, so in our impotence, we "just don't think about it," and go about our lives, no gun-pointing necessary.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tights and a cape? Hot AND unstoppable!

Wed Aug 17, 04:56:00 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah babe, I'd love to see you in some tights, maybe some boots too!

Thu Aug 18, 12:15:00 AM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are you saying we should never go to war? Can't we defend ourselves against those who would attack us? Wouldn't bombing them make us safer?

Sat Aug 27, 12:13:00 PM EDT  
Blogger JC said...

I dont know. Yes, we should defend ourselves against those who would destroy us or our way of life. We should also admit that our way of life is actually better than most, and try to help others become more like us.

Bombing sounds like a bad way to accomplish that. If you know you have Osama in a certain location, sure you should drop a bomb on him, but what about the people next door, or across the street? what did they do to us? And wouldn't it be better to humiliate Osama or others like him by taking him alive and executing him like a criminal?

Have you ever seen what a bomb does? It doesnt just stop killing in a nice clean area. It kills or maims everyone near it. The guilty and the innocent. This is only slightly different from what the terrorists do to us. We drop a bomb on our enemy, knowing that we will also kill innocent people, but justify it as military necessity. They carry a bomb into a shopping mall and intentionally kill innoncent people, with the intention of causing political change.

Surely intention is of negligible importance when you're the one getting blown up. Would you say, "oh it's ok that my whole family is dead, because you were trying to get that other guy who deserved it?"

Killing our enemies is important, but not creating new enemies is also important. Look at Israel, the IDF sometimes flies a helicopter over the west bank and shoots their enemy's car with a hellfire missile. They call it "targeted assasination" and they use it against people they believe to be operating against them militarily. Fair enough right? but every single time, that hellfire missile (which is a pretty small bomb as bombs go) kills or maims some kid on the sidewalk. Yeah they get their man, but they create ten new ones to take his place.

I don't have an answer. You and I would agree, I hope, that we shouldn't nuke a city because there's an enemy of the USA in it, so what I am saying is bombing on any scale kills innocent people, therefore its something we ought to do only when no other option is available.

The same goes for all kinds of violence, and I think we in the US are sometimes too quick to resort to violence abroad, believing ourselves to be safe here at home.

Sun Aug 28, 05:17:00 AM EDT  

Post a Comment

<< Home