GENOCIDE – WAS WORLD WAR II THE LAST “GOOD” WAR?

Prior to the attack on the United States in Pearl Harbor, on December 7^th, 1941, Winston Churchill was in nearly constant contact with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The two were trying to seek a way to bring the United States into the conflict in Europe. This war started on September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, over an act of fait accompli, engineered by Hitler, who then proceeded to eat up most of western Europe and was on the brink of invading the British Isles. Both Roosevelt and Churchill saw the necessity of America's involvement, as Britain was the only democracy still standing, but was a hair's-breadth away from falling. The summer of the Battle of Britain was behind them; Russia had been invaded by Nazi Germany on June 22^nd, 1941, in violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler, and most of Eastern Europe, along with the USSR was losing territory that could be counted in miles – daily – so rapid was the German Army's invasion.

Without bringing down the approbation of an “isolationist” Congress, Roosevelt and Churchill were looking for any way they could to bring in the U. S. and the industrial might she could offer. The closest thing to this, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the famous “Lend-Lease” program, wherein Roosevelt likened our assisting both the United Kingdom, Russia and to a lesser extent, China a “garden hose to put out a neighbor's fire”. In this capacity the power-house of American industry was retooled from churning out American automobiles to building tanks, planes and other war materiél to send overseas. With the Japanese attack and then, Hitler's Declaration of War on the United States on December 8^th, 1941, the United States entered the war for real. The hostilities went on for over three and a-half more years, not ending until August 15^th, 1945, with the surrender of Japan.

Rather than repeat the punitive mistakes and treaties of World War I; the Versailles Treaty and Treaty of Trianon, which had a direct influence on the start of World War II, the Allies were merciful in their victory, for the most part. The lone exception being the USSR, which maintained her grip on every inch of territory gained during World War II, thus realizing both Winston Churchill's and General George S. Patton's fears. It was no different in the east; the USSR maintained a presence on Sakhalin Island (formerly part of the Japanese Empire), which was the site of the shooting down of a KAL airliner in 1983, due to the fact that the airplane had “strayed” over Soviet airspace. A little-known fact is that, indeed, the KAL plane was carrying spy equipment. The Russians never forget their history lessons, as we see today in what has become a confused mess in Ukraine.

I, for one, am not the least bit surprised by this at all. There are ethnic Russians living in Ukraine and on any given day, they may be for Ukraine, or Russia. They speak both languages, as do the ethnic Ukrainians. Yes, it's a bloody mess, but it's also something that has its roots in centuries of history and is not uncommon in that region. The lone exception has been Georgia, a former SSR, that was helmed by Eduard Sheverdnadze, until shortly before his death. A counterpart of Andrei Gromyko and a survivor under Stalin, he dealt with Vladimir Putin handily while President of his native Georgia, and relinquished no territory to Russia. Eastern Europe and western Russia have a long and complicated history, but they are more likely to resume amicable relationships without American or Western European involvement, if left alone. Russia's seemingly peculiar xenophobia is particularly pronounced towards the West, and we would do well to remember that.

My whole reason for this brief little history lesson is merely a framework for what I really want to discuss: wholesale genocide. Towards the end of World War II, the Allied soldiers were liberating towns with names like Oświęcim (Auschwitz), Treblinka, and Bergen-Belsen. What these towns held were horrors never before witnessed, but most certainly have been perpetrated before. In 1912, the Albanians were massacred in the Balkan Wars, but there were few pictures released to the public. There were pogroms in the Pale in Russia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, with entire Russian-Jewish villages burned and looted; the stories have been handed down through the generations by survivors. I've heard stories of predations against Hindus by Sikhs and Indians by Pakhistanis, in 1947.

But, it wasn't until the mid-20^th century that we, as a civilization were faced with whole-sale genocide, and bone-chillingly, a very economic and organized slaughter, at that. It's not just the pictures of the families being led off to the trains with their belongings and wearing their Sunday best; the little ones often very formally dressed, in hats, gloves and looking for all the world as if they're going to a formal outing. Then, in later pictures, you see the mass graves with naked bodies being bulldozed into the pits. The bodies, arms and legs askew, heads all shaved (the Nazis saved their hair, eyeglasses, even prosthetic arms and legs for some hellish reason, and neatly catalogued and stored them) are pitiful; no dignity, no hope. Mercifully, you seldom see their faces. What must their last moments have been like?

Initially, the Nazis machine-gunned their victims and just pushed them into the pits, but this was too inefficient. A better, faster method of extermination was needed, so Hitler went back to his doctors and scientists, who tried various types of gases; thus, the infamous “showers” were born. The earliest of these gaseous concoctions didn't kill quickly enough. People were screaming, and clawing the walls; urinating and defecating and pummeling one another in a desperate attempt to escape. The Nazi guards and doctors complained that it took too long for them to die; the howls and screaming were unnerving and the clean-up was too messy. Eventually, the Nazis found the right combination, Zyklon-B and that was quickly distributed to the Death camps.

Killing Jews and other undesirables became so much more efficient! This way, the Nazis killed over eleven million people in the camps, five million of them Jews, before they were stopped. Not every camp was a Death camp. The actor Robert Clary, who played “Labeau” on the 60s T.V. comedy, "Hogan's Heroes" was in eight different camps, before being liberated. A french Jew, he was snapped up early, after the French surrendered. He somehow managed to survive through his wits and cunning, by working and taking odd jobs; he was transferred from work camp to work camp. He was also in the West, while most of the death camps were in Eastern Europe; Hitler had a hierarchy from least desirable – Jews of Eastern Europe – to less desirable – Lutheran Pastors who dared to speak out, late in the war.

Still, if the United States had not entered the war, where would Hitler and his ilk have stopped? Or would they? Would the killing machines have just kept going? Where would the line have been drawn? Or would it? Stalin was infamous for doing away with his "enemies". He had no Army High Command when Russia was attacked, and it took several years to build an efficient leadership for the Red Army. After World War II, he was taking down scientists and archaeologists for not teaching "Soviet Science", whatever that is. He was on his way to killing off physicians in the infamous "Doctor's Plot", again, a mystifying thing, only he was aware of, when he mercifully died in 1953; where would he have stopped? He had already killed off his most famous assassin, Lavrenty Beria of the Lubyanka and was using substitute assassins, I guess. Their names are lost to history. But it is a tail of a snake eating itself, tail first, in all cases. There is no end until the evil is dead.

courtesy: deviantart.com

It is often said that World War II was the “last good war” primarily because of the atrocities we discovered in the East. We cannot forget that we were attacked and it took THAT act to get us into the war; in that sense, we were “fighting for democracy”. But, we've managed to overlook the horrible genocide in Cambodia, during the reign of Pol Pot and his return to “Year Zero”, later in the 70s. A beautiful country, Cambodia had a population of five million people. By the time Pol Pot was through, he had killed two-fifths of his compatriots. That's two million people. The United States bears some responsibility for the destabilization of that region.

We had promised, during the Nixon administration that we were going to cease bombing North Vietnam, yet in secret, the administration had been bombing North Vietnam and parts of Cambodia for months. We expanded that in 1970, although the administration had promised “Vietnamization”. We did eventually do that, but in such a haphazard and slap-dash way, that the North Vietnamese quickly took over the South and a war broke out between Vietnam and Cambodia. The United States had left the building, long ago.

I bring all of this up for the simple reason that we, as a civilization are now faced with something akin to the Nazis: ISIS, or ISIL, and this is a group of people who are hell-bent on spreading their ideology. They're different, obviously, in certain aspects from the National Socialists of post-World War I Germany, but their methods are similar. They not only use terror and humiliation to strike terror into the hearts of their “enemies” which more often than not, tend to be people from their own countries, but they use the media and propaganda to huge advantage, much in the way Joseph Goebbels used it to sway people who were indecisive about the wonders of National Socialism. Let it not be lost on us that ISIS or ISIL are of the wahabbi sect, and extreme fundamentalists; they are also relentlessly focused on replacing the Saud family as the reigning faction in the Middle East.

When I started to write this article, I had a couple of things that I wanted to bring home to any readers here in the United States. Typically, I have written my posts for a global audience and this should not be lost on them, either. The United States made a conscious decision to invade Iraq after September 11, 2001. Why on earth we ever did that was beyond me, because it really didn't make sense. We were after Osama bin Laden, who was the leader of Al Qaeda at the time, and in Afghanistan. Sadam Hussein, as big a villain as he was, was the strongman of Iraq, who did keep the peace, much like Tito did in Yugoslavia. Sadam Hussein also never invaded or attacked the United States, much as George W. Bush likes to try and paint some kind of devil's horns on the man.

Whatever. We ended up there, much as we ended up in Afghanistan, now fighting Al Qaeda, who in case anyone has forgotten, we helped in the early 80s, when they were fighting the still-then USSR. We sowed some dragon's teeth on that one. But, General Colin Powell, during his term as Secretary of State under Dubya said something very cogent, and something I think bears repeating. He called it the “Pottery Barn Doctrine”; you break it, you own it. I have to agree with this, because of the horrifying scenes I've seen coming out of northern Iraq in the last several weeks. We've not only broken it and not fixed it, but we've created the kind of vacuum that allows sectarianism to rise and fundamentalists to have free rein. The result is a charnel-house of horrific proportions and atrocities that are nearly unimaginable. Yet, our response to date, has been tepid and measured, the only true outrage coming from Vice-President Joseph Biden, and I am not sure if it's over the entire situation, or "just" the fact that two American journalists were beheaded.

Like South Vietnam at the time, there is now a weak leader propped up in Baghdad. The Iraqi Army, as trained by the United States Army is not a good fighting force, yet we spent billions to make an army to replace the soldiers we sent there. The new Iraqi Army's leaders are weak and corrupt, again, much like the South Vietnamese Army was, after we left that quagmire. The forts in the north of Iraq, have seen their leaders desert, when approached by ISIS or ISIL forces and the men left behind are ill-trained and easily captured.

I understand President Barack Obama's hesitation to act, but what kills me is he is not moved to act by the sight of Iraqi soldiers, stripped bare – a horrifying humiliation to any Muslim, by the way – lying face down, in the hundreds and being machine-gunned to death, or being forced to march for miles, bent over. He is not moved to act by the sight of little children with their heads bashed in, lying in gutters. He is not moved by the sight of men, marching in lock-step, in black, with weapons and missiles on platforms that can level villages. No, he is not moved by this.

He is moved by the beheading of two American journalists; a gruesome act. Horrifying enough to contemplate, but even more so when we realize that ISIS or ISIL has many hundreds more hostages to torture, crucify, behead and machine-gun and push into trenches, after taking away their last shred of dignity. I just wonder this: is there not somewhere some ISIS or ISIL group of doctors and scientists looking for a more efficient way to kill even more people in a single act? Do we really want a repeat of the Third Reich?

courtesy: blog.foreignpolicy.com

I realize that this is a tremendous sacrifice for the free world to undertake, but this is a scourge like none I've ever countenanced. I know there are people who will say, “Well, it's in the Middle East, we're in Gloucester, U. K.” or “Sorry, but we don't do violence here in Sweden.” That's all well and good, but these people, this ISIS or ISIL will not rest until they are the only ones left. That is what jihadists and National Socialists do. The only reason we aren't speaking German today, is because the United States stepped in and helped with Lend-Lease and then, when Hitler declared war, we had no choice, but to fight. It was a good war. This might be another one.

#ROW80 3RD QTR 2014 – POST 2 – A VISIT TO MY NEUROLOGIST, 1968

I always look forward to seeing my neurologist. She's a wonderful doctor; a kind, caring and compassionate soul and is a mean wit, although I'm not really sure if she's aware of that fact. Since I was diagnosed with e. t. a year ago, visits to her have been more along the lines of a coffee klatsch, minus the coffee, and some witty and very astute observations from her regarding life. Today we critiqued Samuel Beckett plays, and “new music,” some of the forms of Art that I liken to “The Emperor's New Clothes” School of Whatever. This can also apply to Public Art, the sort that is put up in public squares and in open spaces, to guarantee maximum viewage and eye damage to as many viewers as possible.

 Can you imagine sitting in the office with this giant blue bear? What in the hell were these people thinking. . . or smoking. . . or shooting up, when they came up with this doozy? Oh, and I just noticed the upside-down red and white church. WTF? Same goes for the melted blue car in the upper left.

 A giant, metal, paper airplane. People get paid wheelbarrows of dough to come up with this insipid dreck.

Eyesores abounded in Ann Arbor, Michigan; there was one with a group of mannequins climbing a very tall steel ladder and crammed up along the top, as if they had all run into an invisible ceiling. Ant-like, the ones below were just a-climbin' up into the ones stuck at the top, creating a sort of wedge-shaped grouping of arms, legs and bald heads. The title referred to something nihilistic or inane, like “The Futility of the Worker's Plight”. To me, it just looked like a bunch of dummies on a ladder. Somebody paid good money for that and someone else laughed all the way to the bank. On the next block over was the giant metal cube, that was affixed to the pavement on one of it's corners. It would spin easily if you pushed it. I never did so, because I was afraid the monstrous thing would break off it's pinnings and crush me and 17 onlookers. Public Art can be dangerous!

Somehow, during the appointment, during the can-you-touch-my-finger-then-touch-your-nose-really-really-fast test, in which I always, always spazz out and touch my leg, or her ear, or some shit, the subject of Samuel Beckett came up. I had lived through “Waiting for Godot”, coming out on the other end of that play with a general what-the-fuck-was-that? sort of feeling, but at age eighteen, I was pretty much in a sea of what-the-fuck. I still am, but it's more a sort of confuse-a-what, brought on by my brain's own general demand for everything being made crystal-clear IMMEDIATELY and when, as so often happens in the course of life, that demand goes unrequited, my brain supplies its own answer and it's usually no where near anything close to reality on this planet. Maybe Neptune, from which I believe I'm commuting to and from daily, but not of Earth. This just only enriches my life in untold many and manifest ways and I've come to grips with it. But, I digress.

                       courtesy: samuelbeckett.net                                               

These ladies don't look like the bag-lady, hobos that I saw when I saw this at Stanford, but better clothing doesn't make it any more comprehensible. Maybe I'm just dim-mish.

I started telling my doctor about this OTHER Samuel Beckett play, or vignette, “Come and Go” I sat through at Stanford University once, and it consisted of three hobo-ish looking sorts who sat on a plain, wooden bench and said virtually nothing for about 3 or 4 hours, or so it seemed. These three bag ladies, named Flo, Vi and Ru were holding hands in an interlocking style – I didn't know this at the time, I just saw the thing cold – and spout what seem to be meaningless inanities for a total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Lots of pregnant pauses, and pretending to be statuary. Finally, Vi, or Ru, or Flo, I cannot remember which says “I can feel the rings”. Finis. Play over. I had to go back and read the script and see if this still felt as out-of-touch for me as it did, when I saw it in my 'teens. Yep; no clearer. Beckett was odd. So, I'm telling my doctor all of this and about the hobo women, or vagabonds, or whatever, and she blurts out, while she was scribbling out some notes, “Hmmmm, sounds like “Waiting for Godot” meets Arlo Guthrie”.” I don't think she knows how funny she is sometimes, but I sure agree with her assessment.

Anyway, after our little chin-wag, I got my Primodone refills and I'm solid for 6 months. Graduated from e. t. boot camp. But, I certainly look forward to our visits; she's a keeper.

The '60s and 1968, in particular were a time that saw the United States of America turned on it's head and for the first time, we began to question those we had put in power. After LBJ and his Great Society, which gave us a safety net on top of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had started during his Presidency, it began to look like there might be some true equality and hope for people in the lower income strata, who had had none. But, 1968 changed that, quite a bit. We discovered we had been lied to about the true state of the war in Viet Nam.

Robert MacNamara, General Westmoreland (deputy commander of Military Assistance Command, VietNam, or MACV) had been providing LBJ and the oversight committees in Congress and the Senate with falsified reports on the number of casualties of both the North Vietnamese and our own troops. We had been told that we were winning this war, and it was only a matter of time before we penetrated the North, took Hanoi, and unseated Ho Chi Minh, the titular President of North Viet Nam.

In March of 1968, during the Vietnamese New Year, that myth was busted wide open. A carefully laid plan, up and down the length of Viet Nam saw the uprising of North Vietnamese, especially in the South and in Saigon; the Tet Offensive. We took heavy, heavy casualties and for the first time, we really started to look at what we were doing in a country that as Muhammad Ali would say, we “ain't got no quarrel with them boys”. While this was not the undoing of the Johnson Administration, it was responsible for his decision to not run for a second full term, thus we elected Richard M. Nixon, who turned out to be no better, and in many ways worse for Southeast Asia; he claimed he wanted no wider war, but then expanded it to bombing parts of Cambodia and Laos, thus further destabilizing the region, and paving the way for Pol Pot, one of the 20^th Century's true monsters and a crackerjack mass-murderer, when it came to genocide. Within a decade two-fifths of the 5 million people in Cambodia had died in re-education camps or been summarily executed and buried in mass graves.

courtesy: thefreedomagenda.wordpress.com

Two-fifths of a nation of five million, or rather two million people died under the rule of Pol Pot. While we were not directly responsible for his rise to power, we had a huge part in destabilizing Cambodia, which had declared itself neutral, under the regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. America widened the bombing to include the mountains and the Mekong Delta, claiming that North Vietnamese were infiltrating the region. The truth? The Montagnards in the area were fiercely anti-communist and separatist, to boot.

So, where am I going with all of this? Back in the early 60s, we helped to prop up a corrupt leader in Saigon, because there was no one suitable, and rather than see the entire country become communist, we would have crawled in bed with Satan himself, in order to keep this from happening. In a similar fashion, we aided the Taliban in the early 80s, because they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. When the Vietnamese President Ngo Dien Dimh rigged a vote in the South, and won by an astonishing 98.2 percent, including 133 percent in Saigon, the country became “unified” in 1955. Although we did not have troops in the field then, we had “advisors”, most likely CIA operatives, due to the number of assassinations of key North Vietnamese politicians and players who were eliminated. The “advisors” were there to try and assist in establishing a democracy in Viet Nam, which Dimh had no intention of ever doing.

As these things go, it began to escalate; we were backing the wrong horse, and Ho Chi Minh, a true patriot, not just a communist, wanted Viet Nam for, well. . . the Vietnamese. We should have been backing no horse. Not too much to ask for. We all know the terrible ending of this conflagration. Millions of innocent Vietnamese died. We got our asses kicked, and for the FIRST time, we began to question what in the Hell we were doing in this little back water country, that the French (Dien Bien Phu, 1955) couldn't hang onto in the first place.

Now, we've come to this: Afghanistan is once more looking like some kind of quagmire. Despite the quote “Graveyard of Empires” a quick gander through Afghanistan's history, shows that conquering armies do have some success. The problem is as Alexander the Great has put it “It's easy to march into, tough to march out of”. So, we've split our forces there. We're in the 13^th year of a who-knows-how-many-years run, despite assurances from the Obama administration, that we will leave some day.

My main bitch, whine, whinge, whatever you want to call it is that now we have a fairly well-organized islamic group called ISIS, which uses very sophisticated tactics in re-claiming territory in Iraq. Take Tirkut, recently. Not one shot fired; the whole operation was one of propaganda, much like Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany, but that kind of entrenchment goes a long way towards promoting goodwill among the citizens in comparison with the U. S. invasion. Again, we have backed the wrong horse; some guy, who looks more like a used-car salesman, than someone who would be leader of a great country in the Middle East.

Admittedly, I detest Dubya and think he's a tool of Dick Cheney's and stupid, to boot. I highly doubt that they would have approved of anyone who would think independently, or for the common good of his country. It may be fallacious thinking, but Talabani, just by his association with the Bush administration, can not possibly have his country's best interests at heart.

Elections, schmelections; we helped to groom and primp this guy, this Jalal Talabani, fluff him, pat him dry and make him look good, but underneath is the same old corruption and bad politics. Iraq's constitutional government is loosely based on our own, and he is limited to two 4-year terms. But, how great is it when you have still have corruption at every level from the police on up to the highest offices in the Military? By the end of the U. S.'s stay in South Viet Nam, we had propped up a revolving-door bunch of characters; a total of 13 guys in all. I think some of them had a second go at screwing up the country even more than it was already screwed up. All with our help, of course.

I started typing out all these names and then remembered the ole' cut-and-snip thingy. You can imagine what kind of hell it mush have been like in Saigon, during the last 10 years. I think a few of these guys ended up running 7-11s in east Los Angeles.

And we're doing it again; we're sending U. S. “advisors”, along with 250 military boots on the ground are in Iraq, or are headed back there to Baghdad. That means that we will be in a position to. . . do what? Just what are we trying to accomplish there, because I hear nothing coherent coming out of our State Department or from President Obama. It's time to cut the apron strings, the umbilical cord, let that bitch sail and if she sails over a cliff, so be it.

Damn! What a fine looking flag! My Lenin bobblehead and my copy of the USSR or CCCP Men's Chorus singing the Internationale await. Break out the vodka, black bread, cucumbers and sour cream! Naz Strovya!

I never said a word about Ukraine and Russia because I understand both cultures and people involved. Yeah, it's sad that Ukraine is being bullied by Russia, but the fact is there are ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine near the Russian border and in the Crimea, who probably do feel threatened by the ethnic Ukrainians; that's what happens when you go from being the conqueror, to being just the guy living next door. It's human nature. It's also within Russia's weltenschauung and very typically Russian, that the ground the ethnic Ukrainians are living on once belonged to them. They have typically been part of the Russian empire and within her sphere of influence since the Austro-Hungarian Empire and after World War II, Stalin demanded the states of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tadjikistan as a buffer between Western Europe and Russia. I could be wrong about Azerbaijan and the -stans, but am too lazy to look it up.

Russians are extremely territorial in a way we cannot even begin to comprehend. I counted once, and between the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and World War II, when the Nazis invaded on June 22, 1941, Russia was invaded FIVE times, by enemy forces. The United States has NEVER been invaded; It's not hard to figure out the dynamics there, nor their reasons for behaving the way they do on both sides. I'd give my eye-teeth to be there now, but I can watch from a distance and it's going about the way I thought it would.

If you notice carefully, there's a lot of back-pedaling and well, “maybe we want this, maybe we aren't sure”. This is oh, so typical in Eastern European politics. A lot of smoke and mirrors and hollering about having what they don't have, but once whatever it is they want is on the horizon, or knocking on the door, well, it doesn't look so good up close. Thus, the confusion over whom is doing what and who is for Russia and by extension, Putin and who isn't. Their Politburo (I refuse to call it a Duma or a Parliament, because it's not) took back their vote of confidence on what he's doing in Ukraine, on the eve of the rebels' victory. What does it all mean?

Who knows; somewhere I have a feeling a bunch of folks are digging out their hammer-and-sickle flags and Lenin bobble-head statues and wishing for the good old days. It never fails. But whatever it all means, or doesn't mean, I do believe this: we need to stay home and stop trying to be the world's policemen. We're terrible at it, and we're not exporting Truth, Justice, and the American Way. We're sowing greed, corrupting, and hatred, and as a people, we're not like that. We're a bunch of blind bullies, ignorant of the ways and mores of the people we think we are helping, or pretending to help. We don't need the oil. We don't need the hegemony; technology has put that “bullets and bayonets” mentality back in the closet. We need to start acting like members of the human race, not some self-proclaimed Overlords.