quote:Originally posted by Destineer: ETA: That's not to say there wasn't a lot of anti-Semitism in Poland back then. That fact does say something about their character. But I doubt it's the most important factor in explaining why they let Auschwitz happen. The main explanation, rather, is that they're pretty much just like everybody else. They let bad things happen, because that's the safe, easy choice.
Let? Let? How did they let Katyn happen? And razing Warsaw it the ground? How did they let it happen?
I know the answer, they lost the war. Andlet me tell you one thing- they were pretty mad about it. In septemer 1939 this war still looked pretty much "normal" - soldiers died, as they always did. Hitler lost a hell lot of equipment, Starzynski surrendered Warsaw, and... people from Warsaw where pissed about how badly this war went. Week later schools opened, well, it wasnt that bad.
If those were the circumstances, then yeah, you could blame Poles for letting it happen.
Then lapanki started. And massive killings. Wiping out the intelligentsia. Tortures. Ghettos. And the Camps.
During one black day of August 1944 the combined forces of Germans and Ukrainians and Tatars, who formed the worst division in the history of man kind- all women of Ochota, my own district in Warsaw, were raped, most of them killed afterwards...
There was this thing that Bartoszewski once said- why didnt all those Poles and Jews fight more? During the executions, knowing that they are about to be killed, they still did nothing. So maybe if they were all so unbelivably indifferent about their own deaths- how could they give a Damn about others? I mean, they really knew they were going to die. Why didnt they at least try to do something?
But I think I am beginning to grasp your point. I simply think that someone who is put in unbelivably evil situations, affraid of his life and the lives of his family is not responsible for his actions the way a "normal" person should be. Simple as that.
So, their indifference was evil, but they werent evil themselves. It was inflicted upon them. (is t
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ... Which makes sense: it's the freaking Nazis. In human events, not much comes into their ballpark for aggressive cruelty and bloodletting.
Well.
I've come across stories from American POWs, trading stories about life in captivity, the gist of which was that if you hypothetically had a choice between surrendering to the Nazis and surrendering to the Japanese, you'd better surrender to the Nazis because surrender to the Japanese would quickly lead to a fate worse than death while you'd at least have a chance with the Nazis.
ex:
quote:According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1%, seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[37] The death rate of Chinese was much larger. Thus, while 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, Commonwealth and Dominions, 28,500 from the Netherlands and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.
posted
It's like the very same war at the same time.
Maybe we're interpreting the use of the word "freaking" differently. That implies to me that there should be some difficulty in picking an example that's *worse* rather than one of the first things that come to mind.
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I meant it as an emphasis for the point that of human history, the Nazis serve as an example of depravity and bloodshed and destruction that few other groups would measure down to, rather than it being difficult to find an example or that they were the absolute worst ever or possible.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I'm definitely not in the 'sanctimonious about Poles' camp but seriously the attempt to make actions like auschwitz analagous to the iraq invasion in terms usable for this conversation is just really, really dumb.
Even if you take my post at face value and ignore the implied point about how easy it is for a people to be whipped into a frenzy that devalues people they don't view as part of their own, that's still not what I said.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Heh. Almost everything after the third comma is either hotly contested (unwarranted) or outright wrong (inexplicable). You may not like the explanations, which is fine, but they are there. Oh, and sovereign, really? Yeah, I guess. If only we'd shown proper respect for the sovereign rights of the Hussein family and the Ba'ath party. What cads we are.
Hotly contest within the borders of the United States perhaps, everywhere else has this issue wrapped up, but then you lads are still trying to work out evolution, so we do appreciate there will be a delay.
And as to Hussein, yes you are cads, because invasion and war and regime change doesn't actual equal delivering anything better for the people of Iraq.
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quote:Hotly contest within the borders of the United States perhaps, everywhere else has this issue wrapped up, but then you lads are still trying to work out evolution, so we do appreciate there will be a delay.
It is? Is that why for example every attempt to teach ID in public schools has been roundly nixed by our courts?
Do you really want to go toe-to-toe on backward, ignorant thinking country by country? I'd be happy to. Where are you from again?
Anyway, sure, plenty of countries agree (now) we shouldn't have done it, but then plenty of countries also have within their own borders contested support for their own highly controversial policies too. Unless your idea is that these other countries are just so concerned with the sovereign rights of other nations for their own sake?
Yeah, thought not.
As for being cads, you've shifted topics. I challenged your statement of sovereignty, and you return with questions of overall improvement of civilian life. Nice dodge, there. I suppose what we should have done was what most of Europe wanted us to do, that is either maintain the status quo indefinitely (inflicting quite a lot of domestic suffering of itself) either until Saddam died, followed of course by a peaceful transition of power to (one) of his law abiding nonviolent sons? Or until the Iraqis rose up and rebelled, I don't know, like Gandhi or something.
Listen, maybe you should stick to in-and-out snappy witty retorts. False comparisons, subject changes, and it's only been a few minutes.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I'm definitely not in the 'sanctimonious about Poles' camp but seriously the attempt to make actions like auschwitz analagous to the iraq invasion in terms usable for this conversation is just really, really dumb.
Even if you take my post at face value and ignore the implied point about how easy it is for a people to be whipped into a frenzy that devalues people they don't view as part of their own, that's still not what I said.
What you said was an attempt to make actions like auschwitz analogous to the iraq invasion in terms usable for this conversation (the implied point you mention here does, in fact, do exactly that), so, yeah, no. What you did is what you did.
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posted
If that isn't what you mean, then what DID you mean? Because that seems to be how most people read it....
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posted
Jebus if you want the titillation of comparing pro-war Americans to Nazis without all this flak about false equivalencies, maybe you should try this:
Americans citizens during the Iraq war were complicit in the deaths of Iraqi innocents in a similar way as the average WW-2 era German citizen was complicit in the deaths of British civilians.
There. Now we're comparing collateral civilian deaths with... a few orders of magnitude more collateral civilian deaths. Which is at least apples-to-apples.
At this point the respective justifications for war become more relevant, so perhaps folks thoroughly opposed to the Iraq War will see a lot of equivalency.
And best of all, now you can still call us Nazis without explicitly invoking the freaking Holocaust to do it.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Jebus if you want the titillation of comparing pro-war Americans to Nazis without all this flak about false equivalencies, maybe you should try this:
Americans citizens during the Iraq war were complicit in the deaths of Iraqi innocents in a similar way as the average WW-2 era German citizen was complicit in the deaths of British civilians.
I would say that is true.
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quote:you'd at least have a chance with the Nazis.
If you were an American, sure. Untermensch Slavs, not so much. The Bataan death march was pretty civilised compared to some of what was done to Russian POWs. (That is to say, both Russians who were taken prisoner, and people taken prisoner by the Russians.)
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Jebus if you want the titillation of comparing pro-war Americans to Nazis without all this flak about false equivalencies, maybe you should try this:
Americans citizens during the Iraq war were complicit in the deaths of Iraqi innocents in a similar way as the average WW-2 era German citizen was complicit in the deaths of British civilians.
I would say that is true.
Thinking about it a bit more, I think that we are more complicit to the extent that we likely have more freedom to direct what our government does.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: If you were an American, sure. Untermensch Slavs, not so much.
If we start splitting it out that way, I figure that's more than cancelled out by how Chinese soldiers would be treated by Japanese.
This does seem to be a quick race to the bottom, although I did find this cheery quote.
quote:It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.
The real differences between the two nations, however, developed in the years and decades after 1945.
posted
I have to admit that reading this thread impelled me to join the forum and comment.
I'd like to point out that many of the Poles who were complicit to the crimes commited in Poland were in fact Poles of German ethnicity, or rather Silesians.
One Pole that I would like to mention, is a man named Witold Pilecki, who was an officer in the Polish Army, who, after Germany invaded, continued on as a member of the Armia Krajowa, or Polish Home Army.
One of the orders that he followed after the Germans invaded was to find out what was happenening to all of the Poles who were rounded up in mass arrests and report back on what was happening.
He was transported to Auschwitz, where spent a few years not only documenting what was happening in Auschwitz, but also setting up a clandestine intelligence/resistance network inside the camp.
After a few years in Auschwitz, he escaped, filed his report on Auschwitz, and took part in the Warsaw Uprising.
While I'm sure that there were many Poles who were complicit in what was happening with the Nazis, there were many who were not. --FWIW, The Report of Witold Pilecki is available online, Google it.
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It's good there are no Silesians here, Comrade Volk But obviously Pilecki is a good example. I used to live near Pilecki St. in Warsaw Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Heh. Almost everything after the third comma is either hotly contested (unwarranted) or outright wrong (inexplicable). You may not like the explanations, which is fine, but they are there. Oh, and sovereign, really? Yeah, I guess. If only we'd shown proper respect for the sovereign rights of the Hussein family and the Ba'ath party. What cads we are.
Hotly contest within the borders of the United States perhaps, everywhere else has this issue wrapped up, but then you lads are still trying to work out evolution, so we do appreciate there will be a delay.
And as to Hussein, yes you are cads, because invasion and war and regime change doesn't actual equal delivering anything better for the people of Iraq.
:yawn:
Anti-American windbags who carp about oil are half right. Certainly the war was not motivated by altruism.
But do go on feeling superior while our navies ensure your continued access to world markets... Wherever in the world you happen to be living. Yeah, America sucks so much.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Jebus if you want the titillation of comparing pro-war Americans to Nazis without all this flak about false equivalencies, maybe you should try this:
Americans citizens during the Iraq war were complicit in the deaths of Iraqi innocents in a similar way as the average WW-2 era German citizen was complicit in the deaths of British civilians.
I would say that is true.
Thinking about it a bit more, I think that we are more complicit to the extent that we likely have more freedom to direct what our government does.
I think you'd have to pick that apart pretty deeply to define just how much influence, and of what quality, an average German had at the time, and how much an average American has now. They had a smaller population, a more unstable political situation, and on average a much higher willingness to engage in war efforts, and more motivation to do so.
We have a big population, which is politically more stable, a relatively low military enrollment, and less material motivations for funding that military. Certainly so in comparison to Germany, where military enrollment and war production became a catch-all safety net against poverty.
And the quality of that culpability is different. Is our inaction or cooperation motivated by greed? Certainly for Germans, it was often motivated by fear or desperation. But does that have an effect on your culpability in the acts of a nation? Can we even convert these terms? Is it useful to us to do so? And what of the degree of the crimes? We accidentally killed thousands of civilians in tht war, or did so willingly in an effort to hit other targets. Or we let people die. We did not, as a general rule, engage in attacks against population for the purposes of demoralization in Iraq. The Germans bombed museums, homes, train stations, and killed indiscriminately. And we, the allies, did likewise in Germany and Japan, not restricting ourselves as we did in France or Holland. these would all be issues you'd have to unpack to talk about what's worse, and who is "more" responsible.
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Not in the sense that you mean. But in avery long term sense, as part of the American grand strategy in the middle east, I would have to say yes.
That is: following a long chain of action, consequence, and reaction, the destabilization of the region (which was the primary aim of the war) bolstered American and Western domination of the petroleum market, which ensured prolonged access to cheap fuel for transportation and military use, which strengenthened the position of the US navy and other armed forces, our service economy, and subsequently all the exporters and importers of raw materials and finished goods around the world. And this was of course all done to a) ensure that America stayed in complete control of the global system, and b) help ensure that the political and cultural values represented by hostile governments in the middle east gained no long term traction, and led to no enhancement of their states' strategic situations.
For many reasons, all of which are quite complex, American involvement in the global trade system, including such actions as the Iraq war, have stabilized great swaths of the western world, and kept war from the doorsteps of millions of people for decades. It's apros pos that we're talking about World War 2, because the consequences of increased US involvement in the global system throughout and following that war are still being played out. US involvement is a key reason why war did not errupt in Europe again after 1945, and continued US strength is one reason why war is not a likely scenario in much of the modern world today. I don't point to this as a particular justification of anything, but merely as a fact of the world we currently live in. I've met plenty of Europeans who would like to believe that somehow none of this depended on America being a strong stabilizing force in the Western world, and a strong destablizing force in the middle east and far east, but it's hard to imagine the prosperity that the west currently enjoys having occurred without it.
I don't put my stamp of endorsement on any of the particulars or aims, but it's foolish not to acknowledge the aims, and the very real, and often materially positive adantages that so many people enjoy because of what has been done, even against their wishes. The negative consequences, of death, destruction, and suffering, were not the aims of the war, but they were prices some people were willing to pay (or rather make others pay). Again, I think too few people are prepared to acknowledge that culpability in these matters is more complex than an individual can properly appreciate.
posted
Huh, I thought it was pretty widely accepted that the war weakened our strategic position in the region by strengthening Iran.
I agree with you that US hegemony is a positive force for Europe, I just don't see how it's been helped in any way by the Iraq war. Indeed, when you factor in the trillions the war cost, plus the reduction in our readiness for other conflicts, it seems likely to have been a net negative.
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quote:Huh, I thought it was pretty widely accepted that the war weakened our strategic position in the region by strengthening Iran.
Serious question: what would've happened in and to Iraq when Saddam died, had he died while still in power as the leader of Iraq?
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posted
He was the heir apparent. I imagine it would've worked a lot like the way power is handed over in other hereditary dictatorships, like Syria or Cuba. I wouldn't expect much violence, unless the circumstances became weird in some way.
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Well, it's the Hussein family for one thing, and the two brothers were psychopaths. Uday in particular was known for erratic behavior-in fact it was one of the things which led to his ouster as heir apparent.
But for the sake of argument, no problem, a peaceful transition of power from Saddam to Qusay, the brother doesn't raise a fuss and neither do other members of the Ba'ath party.
Iran does...what, exactly, in this time of transition in Iraq? The other nations in the region? Qusay again assuming a thoroughly peaceful transition (and when we're looking at transfers of power in dictatorships, you need to cast your eyes much further than just those two-it wasn't even a hereditary dictatorship yet), what does he do with respect to his neighbors?
There is this what I think is a fantasy that the choices back in 2002-2003 were between an indefinite continuation of the status quo, and invasion. I don't believe that was the actual choice, which is what I'm getting at, is all.
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quote:Well, it's the Hussein family for one thing, and the two brothers were psychopaths.
More so than the Assads or the Kims?
quote:Iran does...what, exactly, in this time of transition in Iraq? The other nations in the region? Qusay again assuming a thoroughly peaceful transition (and when we're looking at transfers of power in dictatorships, you need to cast your eyes much further than just those two-it wasn't even a hereditary dictatorship yet), what does he do with respect to his neighbors?
I don't know. My guess: Given the way the US watches that region like a hawk, the most likely thing would be for none of these countries--especially Iraq--to rock the boat.
A violent outcome would certainly be possible, just not the most likely thing. And it would take a whole lot for it to be worse than what actually happened.
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posted
[quore]I don't know. My guess: Given the way the US watches that region like a hawk, the most likely thing would be for none of these countries--especially Iraq--to rock the boat.
A violent outcome would certainly be possible, just not the most likely thing. And it would take a whole lot for it to be worse than what actually happened.[/quote]
Well first let's be clear: you're not exactly happy with the way the US watches the region like a hawk and not uncommonly interferes, either, unless I'm mistaken?
Anyway, as for rocking the boat...well, not openly, anyway. Or at least not directly that is to say-directly in public. And as for being worse than what happened, well, alright. It's a decade later of crushing sanctions, and with a stable transition of power there's no end to that in sight, with the ultimate necessary (and agreed to, by the way, by most of the world) goal of removing the Husseins from power, still to be done. In your example, assuming the sort of stability you do with that sort of oversight, Iraq is just..ground down by sanctions and Husseins until what, one of them is sterile and can't reproduce?
As for the Assads and the Kims (strange that you would make an example of the Assads, given what is happening in Syria this very second)...there are more than just three military dictatorships in the world, Destineer. You seem to be cherry picking to an astounding degree.
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quote:Well first let's be clear: you're not exactly happy with the way the US watches the region like a hawk and not uncommonly interferes, either, unless I'm mistaken?
I think we go too far sometimes, other times we do just fine. Afghanistan, Desert Storm and Libya were all fine by me.
I also thought the threats leading up to the Iraq war were perfectly appropriate and very successful. There's a nearby alternate universe in which GWB got the UN inspectors back in, then didn't pull the trigger on the war and became a hardball-playing diplomacy hero.
quote:Anyway, as for rocking the boat...well, not openly, anyway. Or at least not directly that is to say-directly in public. And as for being worse than what happened, well, alright. It's a decade later of crushing sanctions, and with a stable transition of power there's no end to that in sight, with the ultimate necessary (and agreed to, by the way, by most of the world) goal of removing the Husseins from power, still to be done. In your example, assuming the sort of stability you do with that sort of oversight, Iraq is just..ground down by sanctions and Husseins until what, one of them is sterile and can't reproduce?
I see it in much the same way as other small, non-threatening dictatorships. Let it be, maybe take a good opportunity to deal with it if one is handed to us.
quote:As for the Assads and the Kims (strange that you would make an example of the Assads, given what is happening in Syria this very second)...there are more than just three military dictatorships in the world, Destineer. You seem to be cherry picking to an astounding degree.
I mentioned the Assads because you were talking about handing off power, which is something they've done successfully.
Of course I'm going to list the evidence that backs up my claim. Feel free to bring up some countervailing examples. It sounds kind of like you're asking me to make your argument for you.
I'm not saying for certain everything would go swimmingly with the transfer of power. I'm just saying it already has, in some similar situations in the past. So we have at least some reason to believe it would've gone just fine.
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Huh, I thought it was pretty widely accepted that the war weakened our strategic position in the region by strengthening Iran.
I agree with you that US hegemony is a positive force for Europe, I just don't see how it's been helped in any way by the Iraq war. Indeed, when you factor in the trillions the war cost, plus the reduction in our readiness for other conflicts, it seems likely to have been a net negative.
In the short term, a net negative, I agree. In the long term? Well that's a lot harder to say.
I'd have to say I agree with much of what Geroge Friedman has said on the matter in the last few years. There is essentially no real negative outcome for the US in the Iraq conflict or in Adghanistan, because, as he sees things, the destablization of e region, in any regard, is an eventual net positive for US interests. So even short term strategic losses mount to considerable costs, that doesn't really factor heavily in the final sum, years down the road.
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posted
I don't see why that would be the case. US leaders constantly talk about wanting stability in the Middle East. Do you have a link to this Friedman argument?
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posted
Well, what US leaders are talking about is not "stability" in the sense that I think it is sold to the public. Rather, stability in the sense of ease of access and decreased danger to energy supplies and markets. That kind of stability. The US emphatically *doesn't* want a strong and assertive power in the region, except were such power to be pro-west (like Egypt under the former leadership, or Israel today). Failing that, instability is preferred.
Friedman runs Stratcom, and has published a number of books on geo-politics. I don't have a link, but the arguments i refer to appeared in his most recent book: The Next Hundred Years. While the second half is wildly speculative pop-geopolitics / sci-fi futurism, the first half is pretty much an argument against the concept of national self-determinism. An interesting read.
He would argue, for example, that while politicians do in fact talk about stability in the middle-east, and sell that as a goal, the actions of any particular nation do not actually accord to the values of political leadership or ideology, but rather to the better interest of the nation in regards to material access to resources and geographical security. That is, nations are predictable actors not based on political orientation, but on their motivations for self-preservation and advancement. Which is why, for example, the United States could at one time occupy the leadership position in NATO, *and* act unilaterally against the coalition when its aims did not match those of other nations. There is not much in our political ideology that justifies this approach, but our need to expend resources in reaction to threats against national security (real or imagined) outweighed our ideological reservations against unilateralism. Essentially, Friedman argues that nations will always eventually persue security and the broadest reach of power available, and that political culture is a mediating force, and not a guiding one.
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posted
I'm not big into national self-determination either, but I don't think it's moral to kill off hundreds of thousands for the sake of long-term economic expediency. It sounds like you're not exactly endorsing that, but the important difference of opinion here is about whether the war was moral.
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posted
I doubt we have a difference of opinion there. I agree with Sagan- war is equivalent to murder.
However, I'm realistic about what we should expect from geopolitics- and moral behavior in line with our personal values, or even our shared social values, is an unreasonable expectation.
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quote:Originally posted by Szymon: It's good there are no Silesians here, Comrade Volk But obviously Pilecki is a good example. I used to live near Pilecki St. in Warsaw
That's because when the Nazis lost the war all of the Poles who had started calling themselves Silesian Germans were coerced, (I mean invited) to go back to Germany where they belonged! --Not that what replaced the Nazis was really any better of course. -- Is Pilecski Street the one that the Communists killed him on?
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quote:I doubt we have a difference of opinion there. I agree with Sagan- war is equivalent to murder.
I think it's oversimplifying to lump the Iraq war in with, for example, WW2, which was a just and noble struggle. Or even Desert Storm, which was perhaps a war of choice, but not a war of aggression in the same way as the '03 war.
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posted
Just and noble perhaps. But that isn't why the war was fought.
Think about how the war began for America. It didn't start in Europe. It started in Asia, and it started when we threatened Japanese access to trade and resources. Why would we do that? Could it be because we could see 5 years done the road, or 20, and new that controlling as much of Asia as possible would be good for us? Because we were right to think so.
Strategically, Europe was a wash for the US. We focused on it at the beginning to stop Russia from dominating all of Europe by the war's end, but we didn't gain much strategically from the war effort until the 1990's, and the rollback of the soviet satellites. At least, we gained little in comparison to the threats Russia mounted anew in Europe.
But our strategic victory in Asia was profound. We gained a foothold there that lasted decades, and was the focus of most US military action for 35 years.
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...before we entered WWI in Europe, we were not only supplying weapons but were actively using civilian ships to do so. We used them thinking that the German's wouldn't kill civilians, and when they sank the RMS Lusitania we then used that as a justification for entering the war....even though the German's not only TOLD us they would, but they took out newspaper ads here in the US telling our population they would skin it.
Fast forward to today's wars, and listen to us decry terrorists killing civilians, and using them as shields. It's ironic, isn't it?
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posted
Our hidden motives aside, there were reasons out there to morally justify WW2 (WW1, probably not). Maybe they weren't the reasons we started the war, but they did make it right.
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posted
Those weren't hidden motives- just motives. Our *justificiations* were different. But saving world Jewry, or freeing Slavs, was not our motivation. Point in fact: millions of Jews died, and millions of Slavs were never freed.
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