Posted on 07/21/2008 1:04:34 PM PDT by knighthawk
In 1945, as the war in Europe was winding down, American soldiers began to discover the death camps built by the Third Reich in which Jews and others considered too imperfect were murdered and treated with such savagery that every thought about civilization and civilized nations was proven to be only provisional.
Dwight D. Eisenhower proved to be extremely farsighted. Looking at all of the cadavers and the hills of human ash, he ordered that every available photographer and film crew in the European theater be brought to the camps because, the general said, unless this is recorded, 50 years from now there will be people who will say that it did not happen.
We know those people as Holocaust deniers. But few have denied the killing fields of Cambodia, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, or the Congo River choked with black corpses hacked to death in Rwanda and turned white by the river.
No matter the color, no matter the place, once men, women and children are sufficiently dehumanized by the regime in power, the results are always the same. The slaughter will take on a determined fortitude that evolves into a frenzy and does not abate until exhaustion or outside intervention brings it to a screeching halt. This is the burden of no single group. It is a burden that we all must bear because it is the darkest legacy of our humanity: violent xenophobia.
The most obvious and recent bad guy is Robert Mugabe, who has destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe, and had people beaten, kidnapped or murdered for no reason other than exercises in power and corruption. This has been so well documented that the United States and Great Britain recently tried to have sanctions brought against Mugabe at the United Nations. They wanted him to step down because he stole the recent election by having voters beaten and turned away from the polls or terrorized in other ways.
Mugabe, who fittingly wears a Hitlerian mustache, denies this and defends himself by saying that Zimbabwe won its independence from England in 1987 and will not be colonized again!
For all of his greatness, even Nelson Mandela has had no influence. He has called for Mugabe to step down. The rest of the African leaders seem to understand the pressures that their brother Mugabe is under and will not aid in making him out to be a literally bloody fool.
So Zimbabwe, like Darfur, continues to bleed and suffer.
The actions of the Africans are not much different than the European nations that sat on their hands as the Serbs used genocidal tactics against Bosnia, claiming to defend themselves. At no point have outside nations been concerned enough to try and physically stop the slaughters of the innocent whose greatest crime is that they have been dehumanized and accused of being a threat to those who murder them.
When the U.S. and Britain tried to have sanctions brought against Zimbabwe by the UN, Russia was followed by China in using its Security Council veto power, pulling Mugabe's bloody bacon from the fire.
That should have been a great lesson to the world. Whether anyone else does or not, totalitarians always understand each other: It's hard out here for those who resort to mass murder and brutal intimidation when democracy doesn't work. That's a hard one to swallow, but somebody has to wash it down with the honeyed water of revolutionary rhetoric.
crouch.stanley@gmail.com
Ping
What would Reagan do? As in Nicaragua, he would help arm the victims.
Another gift from Jimmy Carter that keeps on giving........
Lost me at the end with the reference to the Serbian genocide in Kosovo. This still has not been documented.
They don't need to. He does that all on his own.
Eisenhower understood the nature of evil.
And the lack thereof makes me think it was all made up to give Slick Willie an excuse to help the Muslims in hopes of getting Arafat to sign and live up to an agreement with Isreal. Arafat was a rat and reneged and no Peace Prize for Willie. Hillary even wasted a kiss on Arafat's wife, to no avail.
I think Willie kept Arafat around so much for more lucrative reasons. His repeated visits to the White House remind me of the pardoned Marc Rich’s dependent ex-wife’s many visits there. People were being taped and arms deals and other nefarious trades were conducted as a result of the info disclosed.
Legacy schmegacy — the Clintons are about the money and corruption in all of its glorious forms.
With that I agree but though that may be the visceral aspect of their characters, I think there is more. I see Hillary's background in college as well as Bill's early history and I believe there is a more dangerous plan afoot. All may relate to the basics, money and power, but I think there is more.
Legacy's importance to the Clintons is to be respected on a wider international stage, all of which would benefit them but would have a definite purpose.
Guess where I live?? Cedar Park, Texas!!
Bump.
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