Never again?

AISH ^ | Feb 2004 | Jeff Jacoby

[yonif]

Two words -- "never again" -- sum up the most important lesson that civilized men and women were supposed to have learned from the 20th century. It is forbidden to keep silent, forbidden to look the other way, when tyrants embark on genocide and slaughter -- if Auschwitz and Kolyma and the Cambodian killing fields taught us nothing else, they taught us that.

Or so, at any rate, we like to tell ourselves. As Samantha Power discovered upon returning to the United States after two years as a war correspondent in Bosnia, the lesson of "never again" is invoked far more often than it is applied.

"Everywhere I went," Power recalled in a speech at Swarthmore College in 2002, "I heard 'never again.' Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' had been a smash hit. The Holocaust Museum had opened on the Mall in Washington. College seminars were taught on the 'lessons' of the singular crime of the 20th century. But why, I wondered, had nobody applied those lessons to the atrocities of the 1990s: the systematic murder of 200,000 Bosnian civilians in Europe between 1992 and 1995 and the extermination of some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi in 1994.

"Did 'never again' simply mean 'never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe between 1939 and 1945?' "

Power went on to write A Problem From Hell, her Pulitzer Prize-winning account of America's failure to intervene in the genocides of the 20th century. The book was hugely and deservedly praised. It made clear, as no previous book ever had, just how much Americans knew about some of the most horrific massacres of the last century even as they were happening, and how little we did to stop them -- or even, in most cases, condemn them.

Which brings us to North Korea.

It is not exactly news that the communist regime of Kim Jong II has sent millions of North Koreans to early graves. Estimates back in 1998 were that as many as 800,000 people were dying in North Korea each year from starvation and malnutrition caused by Kim's ruthless and irrational policies. World Vision, a Christian relief organization, calculated that 1 million to 2 million North Koreans had been killed by "a full-scale famine" largely of Pyongyang's creation.

Nor is it breaking news that North Korea operates a vicious prison gulag -- "not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century," as NBC News reported more than a year ago. Some 200,000 men, women, and children are held in these slave-labor camps; hundreds of thousands of others have perished in them over the years. Some of the camps are so hellish that 20 percent or more of their prisoners die from torture and abuse each year. The dead can be of any age: North Korea's longstanding policy is to imprison not only those accused of such "crimes" as practicing Christianity or complaining about North Korean life, but their entire families, grandparents and grandchildren included.

And of course it is widely known that Kim is openly pursuing nuclear weapons, has fired missiles capable of reaching Japan, and controls one of the largest military forces on earth.

All of this is hideous enough, and more than sufficient reason for making Kim's ouster -- and his prosecution for crimes against humanity -- an explicit goal of the United States. But now comes something new.

"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter." The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country's largest concentration camp. His testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired last week on the BBC. "The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing."

Like other communist officials, Kwon was not bothered by what he saw. "I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault... Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."

Another eyewitness was Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years in a different North Korean camp. She described the use of prisoners as guinea pigs for biochemical weapons.

"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners," she testified. "One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it, but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream...They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were dead."

Gas chambers. Poisoned food. Torture. Families murdered en masse. Staggering death tolls. How much more do we need to know about North Korea's crimes before we act to stop them? How many more victims must be fed into the gas chambers before we cry out "never again!" -- and mean it?

Author Biography:
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. To see a month's worth of his recent columns, please visit www.boston.com/globe/columns/jacoby

[thoughtomator]

"Never Again" means "let's feel bad about it, but not really do anything about it."

We've seen plenty of genocides since the Nazis were defeated. What exactly are we "never again"ing about?

[Houmatt]

You wanna hear about a perfect irony?

In 1992, back when I was on the Dark Side and Houston was hosting the RNC, there was a designated protest area for those who wanted to air their whines. I happened to be present at one of these protests, a pro-abortion rally.

One of the things they did during this thing was have a chant. I swear on my grandmother's grave I am not making this up, but the chant consisted of two words:

"Never again."

[StarCMC]

WOW yonif -- thanks for posting. The author is SO right about "never again" meaning we won't let the nazi's kill Jews in the 40's. There are so many other places around the world that we just would rather not know about. We are sad denial. We ARE our brother's keeper.

[Karyn M. PhD]

"Never again" has been a pro-choice slogan for some time now. You already know this, I'm sure, but for those who don't, it refers to self-inflicted coathanger abortions.

[Nix 2]

We have screamed it to the heavens...for us as well as for anyone who has suffered these agonies, and we have been called professional victims, crybabies, whiners, and much worse. As I have said many times before, right here in this board, we shout loudest because we are the only ones shouting. Many others should be, but the silence is deafening.
As a point, look at Haiti. We removed a dictator to live in splendor, left, and Haiti stayed exactly the same, full of death, disease, hunger, deprivation...but who listens to Haitians cry?
We have shouted about the Christians being enslaved and murdered and maimed in the Sudan, and nothing has changed. Who listens to African Christians weep?
Lebanon's Christians are prisoners, tortured and killed for sport. Who listens to Lebanese Christians weep?
Jews all over the world are in pretty dire straits, and still we rise first to shout to heaven for those who suffer, and no one listens because we are *just* Jews. That dodge won't work anymore. Now it has dumped its evil into the midst of all of man. And ALL men must shout and fight until the evil is as dead as its victims.

[Shooter 2.5]

We just stopped a "Never Again" in Iraq. Will the American Jews vote for Kerry simply because we didn't find the WMD's and ignore the killing fields?

[Nix 2]

Not effing hardly! And we could stop more *never agains* in Iran and Lebanon, and Syria, and so on and so on. What we stopped in Iraq AND Afghanistan is because of George W. Bush. Had anyone other than he been at the helm on September 11, American Soldiers would be watching YOU! And Gore would be king. Pray no lib gets this office ever, ever again, because if the left wins one more term in the WH, there will never be another election. Now shoot that!

[Nix 2]

And by the way, I don't claim to speak for all American Jews, JUST ME, so why would you ask me that question in that fashion?
I was speaking of the horrors that take place that countries around the world ignor until they burst in some kind of obscene rage. Like what is happening in Sweden these days. You DO know about Sweden, right?

Immigration, Multiculturalism, & Islam in Sweden - Out of Control II
Article on Free Republic___

Someone finally yelled...after many, many years. Now it might be too late. It's out of control.

[Shooter 2.5]

I don't expect an answer from Freepers because I assume we all know what the people who vote for the dems think.

Your post fit in with the subject of my post. Too many American Jews are voting for the wrong party if they want to support their own and the nation's ability for defense.

[little jeremiah]

Years ago when one kid was in junior high school she had to do a report on Hitler or WW2, and we got books from the library, and for the first time I read all kinds of eye-witness as well as reserached books on WW2 concentration camps - books like "Anus Mundi", "Treblinka", "Baba Yar", "Sobibor" and more.

My first thought was - People are no better now than they were then. In fact, they're worse now. So it's only a matter of time before some worse than this happens.

Many horrible wars have happened, gulags, and more. But Germany has the vile distinction of the most extreme factory-ized, legislated, systematic, regulated and time managed slaughter of millions of non-combatants. Many come close - Stalin, and Saddam tried his best.

But it will happen again, and worse. As long as miserable humans want to try to be the supreme controller and dominator.

[Nix 2]

Would you please restate that in American? I am not especially versed in mumbo-jumbo.

However I am versed in Lifetime Member NRA, and JPFO, am a trained firearms instructor, archery instructor, and can probably beat you at darts. What's the game? Is Jews a problem for you?

Shooters sometimes lose their marbles is the only reason I'm askin', ya know?

[Sender]

If we were to preemptively take out the North Korean government, the libs would scream bloody murder over US imperialism and nation building.

[Nix 2]

Who the heck would listen? Do we have to wait until the last gasp? Aren't there enough decent folks who would rejoice to see people allowed to eat something besides tree bark? Don't want to smell any more fried people? Don't want the earth polluted with evil dictators and potentates?

[rmmcdaniell]

"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners," she testified. "One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it, but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream...They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were dead."

Coming to a grocery store near you. Likely food supply terrosism agent.

[yonif]

yup

[flashbunny]

I say we fire up production of the liberator pistol again and drop 5 to 10 million or so of them to the population of north korea. They can take their freedom into their own hands then. No waiting for un permission to act.

[archy]

Never Again. Niemals weider.

[tdadams]

Power went on to write A Problem From Hell, her Pulitzer Prize-winning account of America's failure to intervene in the genocides of the 20th century.

Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't. Noam Chomsky and William Shawcross have made a career of criticizing the U.S. for it's involvement in southeat Asia, specifically blaming America for the Khmer Rouge massacre.

Now this woman wants to castigate America for not intervening in Rwanda, etc. So, now the leftist America-hater can find an angle on which to criticize us whether you favor intervention or disapprove.

Why do journalists, and wannabe journalists, think they can play armchair diplomat? They just sound like curmudgeonly old harridans.

[archy]

I say we fire up production of the liberator pistol again and drop 5 to 10 million or so of them to the population of north korea. They can take their freedom into their own hands then. No waiting for un permission to act.

Well, not just the Liberator. And a few other tools- Sten Guns, and C90 or Armbrust antitank launchers would need to be a part of the mix, too.