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Posted August 18, 2001
No Dutch Sharon
In
his article, "The
Chosen Pariah," Ran HaCohen claims that Dutch citizens are
furious that their defense minister is compared with Sharon. Actually,
the Dutch have every right to be outraged by such a false equivalence.
For one thing, there is a great deal of evidence to indicate that the
so-called Srebrenica massacre was a hoax or, at the very least, greatly
exaggerated.
Stella Jatras wrote an article on this, "Srebrenica: Code Word to Silence Critics of US Policy in the Balkans," which appeared on Antiwar.com quite a while back. There are also a series of excellent articles debunking the mainstream media's Srebrenica story on the Emperor's Clothes website at http://www.tenc.net.
In addition, even if we were to assume that the so-called Srebrenica Massacre did occur, ... the equivalence of the Dutch Defense minister with Ariel Sharon or Dutch peacekeeping troops with Israeli troops would still be unwarranted.
Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in direct violation of international law (not to mention basic morality and world opinion). Israeli forces worked directly with the Phalangists who bear responsibility for the Shabra-Shatilla massacre.
In contrast, the Dutch peacekeepers (and Dutch Defense Minister) did not mount an illegal invasion of Bosnia-Herzegovina killing thousands and most certainly did not use Bosnian Serbs as a mercenary force to do their dirty work. Even Clinton and NATO did not make any such claims against the Dutch. All sides agree that, unlike the Phalangists (under Israeli supervision), Bosnian Serb forces did not kill women and children at Srebrenica. Sharon, the IDF and the Phalangists were barbaric; the Dutch peacekeepers (and most likely the Bosnian Serb forces) were not; the analogy fails.
While I also believe that it is in theory better to punish some war criminals than none, there are problems ... in that view. Who is to say who is a war criminal? In the past the victors decided who the war criminals were, and they were almost always from the ranks of the losers. If things proceed as they have been, we will have a system whereby the need to "capture war criminals" or stop war crimes lends itself to the whims of the worst interventionists and criminalizes international relations altogether. The weaker and less powerful will be attacked as war criminals (sometimes on trumped-up charges) while the more powerful leaders and major criminals of the "international community" will be cheered as heroes, or at least go unpunished.
These
are the only criticisms I have of Ran HaCohen's articles so far; they
are generally excellently incisive.
~ Dimitri O.
Truth
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of August 10, "Harry Truman, War Criminal":]
Wow! That was clean, quick and complete! Mr. Ambrose ["Raimondo's Wrong," WorldNetDaily, August 9] will, no doubt, not be changing his mind in the near future, but many others might.
It is one of the hardest things one must do, to become a paleo-lib-con, to give up our thinking that U.S.A. is always right and true! For me, it took a few years until I was convinced. It was people like you that finally helped me see the light. For that, I thank you. We all have to keep our belief that truth is freedom's friend, that we will never get where should be going without it.
Keep tellin'em the truth -- we might just really be "set free!"
Mighty, Myth-Breaking Truth
We all owe a debt of gratitude to the esteemed Tom Ambrose of WND whose response ["Raimondo's Wrong," WorldNetDaily, August 9] to your article on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Justin Raimondo's column of August 8, "Hiroshima Mon Amour"] prompted this brilliant sequel [Justin Raimondo's column of August 10, "Harry Truman, War Criminal"] . Had Mr. Ambrose not raised your hackles I, and hopefully countless others, would not have had the benefit of your much more illuminative secondary reflections on W.W.II. I had to read it twice, and investigate the links, to appreciate its full import.
Your almost offhand assertion that the Roosevelt/Truman administration partnered with the Communists to enslave much of Europe and Asia will no doubt befuddle many government-schooled readers and deserves a complete essay of its own.
Your second to last paragraph has the ring of mighty, myth-breaking Truth and of course will shock many. Thanks!
Allied Crimes
...For the most part I have ... enjoyed Justin Raimondo's articles and opinions. I particularly liked his recent article on the "lefties in drag," the neocons ["Seducing Bill Kristol," August 6].
...I found his recent article on the Second World War and the machinations and evils of the Roosevelt gang and Harry Truman ["Harry Truman, War Criminal," August 10] to be very insightful as well. I was delighted that Mr. Raimondo openly presented these people as war criminals....
However, I am saddened that Mr. Raimondo does not discuss probably the worst Allied crimes of the Second World War and its aftermath: 1.)the non-atomic terror bombings over Germany and Japan that killed millions of civilians, 2.) the postwar Expulsions/genocide of Germans from the real Eastern Germany (the "Oder-Neisse" territories and the Sudetenland), and 3.) the activation of the Morgenthau Plan in the Western Zones of Occupation in Germany, through Joint Chief of Staffs Order 1067 (JCS 1067) and the Potsdam Verdict.
There are numerous books that cover the first of the three crimes against humanity and the Roosevelt gang's involvement is obvious. Alfred de Zayas has written perhaps the best works on the second, the expulsions. James Bacque has written bravely about the third set of atrocities in his work, Crimes and Mercies. Both the Expulsions and the Morgenthau Plan mass murders through starvation are covered in an article at the achieves of lewrockwell.com, by Gregory Pavlik. Bacque and De Zayas both highlight the unspeakable criminality of Truman and his infernal predecessor and the hypocrisy of American imperialism. Pavlik does likewise in his fantastic article.
The Law
We are used to see the bad face of ... American policy. ... It enforced an embargo on the Iraqi people without permission from the UN, it enforced no-fly zones in the Iraqi skies, without any approval, and it is still encouraging the slaughterer, Sharon, to assassinate the unarmed Palestinian people, using American planes and heavy weapons.
International law does not incriminate the resistance against occupation [but] there are dozens of UN decisions calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from occupied Arab lands -- but because of the US ... Israel continues its aggression against the Arab people....
I could not believe my eyes when I read that the US vice-president said that Sharon has the right to kill supposed terrorists. ... According to Mr. Chaney ... the occupying forces have the right to determine who is a terrorist, and assassinate him, and we have to forget every thing about international law and human justice. So what should you expect if you exclude the law out of the equation? Only more terrorist actions.
The Ramifications of Theological Fantasies
Though I am unable (and, in truth, quite unwilling) to argue the ramifications of theological fantasies with those sufficiently credulous to believe in them (" ... it could be the Apocalypse"), I must nonetheless respond to S. Ortha's letter of August 8, 2001 with a resounding, 'So what?'.
Which
of the warring tribes currently claiming squatting rights to the Middle
Eastern real estate alternatively known as Palestine or Israel (depending
upon one's perspective) is of no importance to me (though the extent
of Israeli hypocrisy never ceases to amaze). As a noninterventionist,
my only concern is that America stay out of that pestilent hellhole,
and all of the others that the Permanent Regime seems so intent on invading
and occupying, with the bill, as always, to be paid in American blood
and treasure.
~ F. Godinez