Genocides and Genuises
Auschwitz's Liberation celebration is being held for the past couple of days and for the next few days. It was on January 27, 1945 that the Soviet Red Army pushed westward enough to liberate a small town in Poland called Osweicim. It was there they found multiple camps just outside of town. At these camps, they found tons of human hair, ashes, gas chambers and housing more fit for wild animals than the thousands of nearly starved Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other "undesirables" who were there working themselves to death. This year is the first year the United Nations has decided to mark the event. Jordan and Israel were the only nations from the Middle East that were scheduled to speak. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz represented the United States and the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Israel were all there to mark the event. United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan took the opportunity to make some remarks. While Secretary-General Annan was grilled on the oil-for-food scandal, he did make a few pointed barbs about preventing genocide.
He commented we had not done enough in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It should be noted all of these atrocities happened under previous Secretaries-General. Of course, he didn't mention the genocide we were trying to stem in Somalia when it didn't go as planned. He conveniently forgot that UN troops were fired on first, prompting US troops to respond where the UN troops were not enough. Oh well, what do we expect? He also ignored the fact that the troops who were in the former Yugoslavia were American troops sent in by President Clinton to maintain what little order they could. In all fairness, there were UN troops there for part of it. After all, someone had to turn a blind eye at Srebrenica. Fact and realities of military strategy and logistics don't seem to figure into Annan's view of humanitarian efforts, it seems. He can't be blamed for that really; military necessities often get in the way of planning a nice and pretty humanitarian mission. A soldier can either feed with two hands or hold a weapon with two hands, but he cannot do both. And if he gives up the weapon, he gives up security.
The now cliche "Never again, never forget" was bandied about to show all sides were serious about not letting the kind of atrocity like the Holocaust happen again. At Auschwitz, approximately 1.5 million people were killed in the span of two and a half years. Almost that many died during six years of the Irish Potato Famines. Of course, one of the worst parts of the Holocaust, especially at Auschwitz, was not the killing, but what was done before they were killed. Men like Dr. Josef Mengele who took advantage of the camp to further his own personal "medical" agendas. While we don't have any Mengele's running around, we do have to keep an eye out. As much so people would like to associate, Abu Ghraib was not nearly as bad. Most of what people are describing there was humiliation. Auschwitz was death on a scale scarcely believable at the time. While we must never allow things like that to happen again, we cannot let "Never Again" become a trite catch phrase. We can't just shout out "He's being a Nazi" when some government official does something we don't like. We have to be specific in our criticisms if they are to mean anything. We must hate those whom we hate for who they are and the actions they do, not because they fall into a group we don't like.
It has been asked many times how such a thing like this could happen. Well, Stanley Milgram performed his famous/infamous experiment to figure out why. His answer, and so far the best answer we've found, because they were told to. Now, any number of sociologists and others offer up theories about how the German people got to where they could conditioned to do these things. The simple truth we don't like facing up to the idea that any one of us can be a monster in the right conditions. We don't like the idea that our society can produce monsters, so we try to rationalize it all away as not out fault.
And so we have other geniuses committing another crime: helping us believe it's not us, it's them.
So it is written, so do I see it.
He commented we had not done enough in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It should be noted all of these atrocities happened under previous Secretaries-General. Of course, he didn't mention the genocide we were trying to stem in Somalia when it didn't go as planned. He conveniently forgot that UN troops were fired on first, prompting US troops to respond where the UN troops were not enough. Oh well, what do we expect? He also ignored the fact that the troops who were in the former Yugoslavia were American troops sent in by President Clinton to maintain what little order they could. In all fairness, there were UN troops there for part of it. After all, someone had to turn a blind eye at Srebrenica. Fact and realities of military strategy and logistics don't seem to figure into Annan's view of humanitarian efforts, it seems. He can't be blamed for that really; military necessities often get in the way of planning a nice and pretty humanitarian mission. A soldier can either feed with two hands or hold a weapon with two hands, but he cannot do both. And if he gives up the weapon, he gives up security.
The now cliche "Never again, never forget" was bandied about to show all sides were serious about not letting the kind of atrocity like the Holocaust happen again. At Auschwitz, approximately 1.5 million people were killed in the span of two and a half years. Almost that many died during six years of the Irish Potato Famines. Of course, one of the worst parts of the Holocaust, especially at Auschwitz, was not the killing, but what was done before they were killed. Men like Dr. Josef Mengele who took advantage of the camp to further his own personal "medical" agendas. While we don't have any Mengele's running around, we do have to keep an eye out. As much so people would like to associate, Abu Ghraib was not nearly as bad. Most of what people are describing there was humiliation. Auschwitz was death on a scale scarcely believable at the time. While we must never allow things like that to happen again, we cannot let "Never Again" become a trite catch phrase. We can't just shout out "He's being a Nazi" when some government official does something we don't like. We have to be specific in our criticisms if they are to mean anything. We must hate those whom we hate for who they are and the actions they do, not because they fall into a group we don't like.
It has been asked many times how such a thing like this could happen. Well, Stanley Milgram performed his famous/infamous experiment to figure out why. His answer, and so far the best answer we've found, because they were told to. Now, any number of sociologists and others offer up theories about how the German people got to where they could conditioned to do these things. The simple truth we don't like facing up to the idea that any one of us can be a monster in the right conditions. We don't like the idea that our society can produce monsters, so we try to rationalize it all away as not out fault.
And so we have other geniuses committing another crime: helping us believe it's not us, it's them.
So it is written, so do I see it.