Monday, July 14, 2014
Hell Hath No Fury Like a "Good Guy" Scorned
Steven Spielberg loves to emphasize the horrors of war in his movies, and that's fine, but instead of simply focusing on the American soldiers and victims of the Holocaust, wouldn't it be nice if he occasionally showed the carnage that U.S. and British policies have had on civilian populations over the years during these wars; those British concentration camps during the Boer War, the atrocities committed by Sherman and Sheridan during the Civil War and later during the war against the Plains Indians, the barbarism committed by U.S. occupiers in the Philippines, the British hunger blockade of Germany during the first world war (an act that literally killed hundreds of thousands of civilians), the targeting of German and Japanese population centers by Churchill and FDR during WW2, the torching of entire villages in South Vietnam under the LBJ and Nixon regimes, the decade long sanctions policy against Iraq, etc.? I mean, I know that we're supposed to be the good guys and all and that, yes, the victors (of which we were except for Vietnam) generally get the final determination but, damn, a semblance of perspective, for Christ!
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10 comments:
"the decade long sanctions policy against Iraq, etc.? "
In all fairness, the sanctions policy included sending food and medicine. Saddam refused a lot of this, hoping the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis from starvation and health problems would give him some propaganda victory on the world stage.
This from a man who had killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis also and otherwise through execution orders.
For all the gnashing of teeth over how 'liberal' Hollywood allegedly is.....that will never happen.
I am not sure if there are any "good guys" when it comes to war.
Brings to mind Carl Sagan's observation-
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
-A Pale Blue Dot
Wow, BB. Best comment of the day...
Jerry: Yours... well, comes close.
If there are no "good guys" does that imply there are no bad guys or that everybody is bad?
Self defense against aggression is not good?
Humans are a strange species.
I suspect that if there are any "good guys" they would be called losers.
dmarks, according to UNICEF, per capita income in Iraq went down 87% from 1990 to 1996. If you want to lay some of that blame on Saddam I don't have a problem with it. I would, however, point out that if this Hussein was such an evil fellow (and I agree with you that he certainly was), we probably shouldn't have bankrolled him for X number of years and supplied him with poison gas.
Political. The old adage if you're an enemy of my enemy then you are my friend.
Lacking any real principle the results of our policies in the region really should have been foreseen.
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