Jackson Jambalaya

A comment on a website that linked this post:

When I was a teenager, I worked for a guy that was in the first group of GI's that went into Buchenwald, some soldiers started throwing up due to the smell, others were crying so bad they couldn't follow orders, he heard machine gun fire on the other side of the camp, and they rushed there as fast as they could. The SS was getting rid of as many healthy prisoners as they could until they ran out of ammo. When he and other got there, the SS stood with their hands in the air, surrendering like the good Nazi's they were. They rounded them up into a small circle and held them at gunpoint until an officer arrived to make a decision, at which they saw they were being surrounded by hundreds of prisoners. He said he wasn't sure who to be afraid off, when the officer order the GI's to "fall in." Off they marched noticing the SS was now surrounded by the prisoners. He asked me if I had ever heard of someone being torn limb from limb. He said he saw it, and just smiled.

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This is an important reminder for those to young to know. You are to be applauded, Kingfish. It should , however,also be understood that the argument that genocide is one of the assumed riskswhen one goes to war, particularly when a civil war occurs, is not without merit. We've only to look at Cambodia and Rwanda and Darfur to know that. Or, look at the " disappeared" in Argentina. When one demonizes an enemy to the point that they are no longer seen as " human" , the risk escalates. When a group of people is stereotyped so as to be blamed for social ills, it becomes easier to kill them. Us humans need to understand that death doesn't kill ideas or offer the best solution to perceived social ills.

5:58 you've got me confused. Are you blaming "the war" for the German's Final Solution, rather than the people who came up with it and implemented the systematic extermination of Jews and other undesirables?

Thank you very much for posting this and remembering the victims of these concentration camps. For those who have never gone to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, I highly recommend going. You will literally be there for hours before you even realize it. The actions of the Germans cannot be forgotten, and history cannot be rewritten to undermine what happened to the Jews during WWII.

Agree completely. The Holocaust Museum is a must-see.

Thank you, Kingfish, for posting this. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Whoa. Hold on there. Ahmadinejad says none of this happened.

Ironhost, 5:58 is saying that genocide is a possibility anytime humans go to war -- and he's right.

This has nothing to do with whether or not a war is just, it's just a part of being human. I think most (though not all) people are born with an essential sense that killing other human beings is wrong. But in war, we ask soldiers to do that very thing. One of the ways that militaries have made it possible for their fighters to overcome that disconnect is to engage in persuasive tactics that dehumanize the opposition. It makes sense, in a horrible way -- a soldier may be able to kill "the enemy" much more easily than another person. Soldiers who agonize about every kill won't be very effective, but soldiers who completely STOP agonizing eventually can become monsters.

Particularly repressive governments have used the tactics of dehumanization to the point of genocide. They take their political/military opposition and describe them in ways that robs them of any humanity. The Nazis did this to incredible effect -- if you look at much of the antiSemetic propoganda they produced, Jews are always portrayed as caricatures, primarily taking on rat-like facial characteristics. This was done so that German soldiers and German people would cease to see Jews as humans, but as something less than human. It made it much easier to wipe them out if they weren't seen as "people."

Modern-day genocides follow much the same patterns. These tragedies don't happen in a vaccuum, they occur after a LOT of effort to rob the "enemy" of any humanity.

I don't think that 5:58 is saying that all war is unjust or that it will ineviably lead to crimes against humanity, he's simploy pointing out the RISK inherent in war -- and it's a risk because humans are sinful beings.

It's still sounding like War = genocide to me. We've waged wars before without systematically exterminating the people of the country. We didn't round up German/Japanese/Italian citizens and ship them off to concentration camps. Their POW's here had better care than ours did there.

I think what I'm aiming at is that genocide isn't or doesn't have to be an inherent part of war.

THE Muslims? Which Muslims is that. Is this like THE Catholics who abused all those kids?

How do you know that 5:58 is a 'he'?

I used "he" because I fall back on the standard I was taught in school. I am a chick but I hate the awkward "he/she." I guess I could have said "it," but that might have been more offensive. We need a good gender-neutral pronoun for situations like that.

The assertion isn't as simplistic as "war = genocide." War CAN create the conditions that lead to genocide, simply because what war demands of the people engaged in it. That said, was CAN be genocide-free and genocide CAN happen without an "officially declared" war. I don't think anyone has "officially" said that what is going on in the Sudan is a war, but it sure as hell is genocide.

Quite frankly, some of the most pervasive "dehumanization of the opposition" going on in the world today is in American politics. The other side is no longer someone you disagree with, they are EVIL, practially not worthy of LIFE, much less citizenship.

Many political and military leaders can use the propoganda techniques I described within or without war. But there is NO question that war DOES require participants to take a step back from their own humanity in order to be able to do what is necessary, such as bomb cities or kill individuals. That's not a criticism, it's a fact.

It's also one of the reasons so many soldiers have trouble reintegrating into society. It's hard to go from viewing other humans as mere targets to seeing them as people again. What we ask of our soldiers is not just physical sacrifice, it is emotional sacrifice as well.

All of that said, I am totally comfortable saying that I think war is bad -- and I don't mean that in a flaky Cindy Sheehan kind of way. I absolutely believe that war is often necessary, but it is always going to be a tragedy and loss for all sides involved and something to be avoided if at all possible.

By the way, if you want to see a Holocaust documentary that will knock you on your butt, watch "Night and Fog." I'll never forget the part of the film where the camera is slowly panning away from a still, black-and-white photo of a room full of something you can't identify, while the narrator (and subtitles) talk about how the German nobility suffered without access to luxury items towards the end of the war. As the the image becomes clearer and clearer, the narrator talks about the lack of material with which to stuff expensive cushions, such as cotton.

As the narrator says that the nobility were able to find other ways to stuff their cushions, you realize that you are looking at a picture of a large room filled floor-to-ceiling with human hair. By the time the narrator tells how the hair shaved from the heads of Jewish men, women, and children was used for thos cushions, your heart is in your stomach. I'll never forget that image as long as I live.

Quite frankly, some of the most pervasive "dehumanization of the opposition" going on in the world today is in American politics.

Stopped reading after that sentence and won't be reading any more.