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Did you even notice the response I responded to? Flexie: "They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must have been involved, one w
by notlisted 14y ago
Did you even notice the response I responded to?
Flexie: "They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must have been involved, one way or another. That's not the work of just a few crazy fanatics."
My point: terrible things were done right here, families uprooted, lives destroyed, hunger, fear, people stored in camps, in our own free country, with millions of witnesses, and yet... these crazy things happened, because society was told by those in charge that it was appropriate to do so.
Several years later we bombed 100k people to their deaths by fire (Tokyo). Tokyo was just one of 67 cities that was bombed with napalm (before we threw the nuclear stuff).
McNamara's comment on the bombing was this: LeMay said that "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." "And I think he's right," says McNamara. "He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals." . . . "LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"
Keep on believing!
- NoPiece 14y agoLet me ask you an honest question - why do you even feel the need to bring up Japanese internment in the context of and article on the Holocaust? Do you want to lessen the horror of the Holocaust, or do you really think the US behaved morally like Nazis in WWII?
- justin66 14y agoIt's a natural enough thing to do, and not for some misguided reason of moral equivalence. The striking thing about Nazi Germany is that it happened, and that people not too different than us let it happen. If your interest in studying this stuff is thinking about how we all keep it from happening again, studying comparable events - especially ones that happened right here - is potentially important. I could elaborate but it really feels like I'm just stating the obvious.
- NoPiece 14y agoBut it isn't natural when the comment is based a misguided moral equivalence. And my point is that they are not comparable. It is as bad as if someone posted a story on Manzanar, and someone replied "Kind of like when my parents made go to sleepaway camp." That would be an insulting to the Japanese internees.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- notlisted 14y agoLet me answer you honestly. Because of the comment which I read as "Germans are truly evil, it could never happen here!" (I'm originally from Europe) Because we're always on our high horse about our supposed moral excellence, saviors of the world, yet most are oblivious about the horrors we've committed (and don't kid yourself... still commit). Because in THIS time, where we have the internet and school curricula/writers of history books no longer have the power for mass indoctrination, we STILL stick to our myths, our heroes, our self-perceived excellence.