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Apples and Oranges.... military actions are not the same thing
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That is theoretically true, but the line has become very blurred. As I pointed out before, citizens who used to fight under duress for whatever king had acquired them as spoils are now more inclined to defend their own country, using whatever means is available to them to repel and invading enemy. Nowadays, everything is a military action and there is nothing left to contrast it with.
I guess the casinos hide the gas chambers on the Indian reservations.
Is this your recollection from visiting an American Indian reservation in the 1930s? Concentration camps are concentration camps. Ovens are an optional afterthought.
Is this your recollection from visiting an American Indian reservation in the 1930s? Concentration camps are concentration camps. Ovens are an optional afterthought.
No, it was a snarky comment in response to an absurd comparison.
Yes, the original creation of the reservations was certainly not something to be admired. Nobody with any level of sanity disputes that. Nonetheless, for all the evil that went into their creation, I do notice any mass exodus away from them today. Indeed, they have become bastions of special interests in their own right. Whatever you or I feel about them, people still voluntairly inhabit them because they are still alive as opposed to the Jews who were stripped naked and gassed.
So no, a concentration camp is not a concentration camp. Japanese-Americans were unjustly sent to concentration camps. And then they left them as they were not death camps. That is the optimal difference. Wehrmacht POWs were sent to Allied POW camps and then they were released upon cessation of hostilities. That is the optimal difference. Even the inmates at Gitmo will ultimately face some kind of justice system. Jailed or acquitted, they will be alive. That is the optimal difference.
The best analogies you could find would be the Soviet Gulags, the Khmer Rouge Reeducation Camps, Maoist Reeducation Camps and Serb camps which held Muslims lucky enough to escape being machine gunned in a ditch, a tactic copied from, you guessed it, the Nazis. And none of those reach the level of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and the others.
The Germans committed the Holocaust. They do not earn a pass because other nations have committed injustices. If you do that, you erase any notion of responsibility.
I can't understand only one thing about Holocaust. It seems that the massacre of Jews is somehow exclusive and more commemorated compared to other genocides. The number of killed Russians, Poles, Belorussians and even Germans was larger than that of Jews. But only Holocaust is singled out.
Were any of your examples a mass genocide of 6.5 million in a matter of a few years? I honestly don't know the answer to that, so forgive my ignorance if the answer is yes.
We keep deviating from the historical facts to introduce arcane variations on the theme, from Cambodia to Casinos.
Hitler perceived the Jews as a problem. He devised a final solution. He had the charisma to lead ordinary people to do extraordinary things, that differed only by degree. That's pretty much it.
Many of the Germans emigrated to the USA in the decades prior to the holocaust. Had they not emigrated, these fine upstanding hard-working Americans would have been there slamming cattle cars shut. Same gene pool. What am I missing?
Genghis Khan persuaded simple horsemen to murder every single man woman and child in the great city of Herat. Had there been 20 million people in Herat, they would have killed 20-million. They "ran out," as Rumsfeld said, "of useful targets". The magnitude of these events is not limited by the imagination of the madman nor his subjects' zeal to obey, but by the pool of available victims.
Well, some types of mass murders are classified as "genocide". The genocide of Jews during WW2 is named "Holocaust". But certain labels that are given for mass massacres do not increase or lessen their tragedy. Number of deaths does. And if so, then why are we always talking about Jewish tragedy as something more important and tragic. Even if you think that Stalin had better reasons to kill than Hitler had.
The use of "Holocaust" in reference to the Jewish genocide probably has more to do with the word's roots, which lie in the Hebrew Bible... also refers specifically to the act of burning, which is how the Nazis eliminated most of their victims.
"Word History: Totality of destruction has been central to the meaning of holocaust since it first appeared in Middle English in the 14th century, used in reference to the biblical sacrifice in which a male animal was wholly burnt on the altar in worship of God. Holocaust comes from Greek holokauston ("that which is completely burnt"), which was a translation of Hebrew 'ōlâ (literally "that which goes up," that is, in smoke). In this sense of "burnt sacrifice," holocaust is still used in some versions of the Bible. In the 17th century the meaning of holocaust broadened to "something totally consumed by fire," and the word eventually was applied to fires of extreme destructiveness. In the 20th century holocaust has taken on a variety of figurative meanings, summarizing the effects of war, rioting, storms, epidemic diseases, and even economic failures. Most of these usages arose after World War II, but it is unclear whether they permitted or resulted from the use of holocaust in reference to the mass murder of European Jews and others by the Nazis. This application of the word occurred as early as 1942, but the phrase the Holocaust did not become established until the late 1950s. Here it parallels and may have been influenced by another Hebrew word, šô'â ("catastrophe," in English, Shoah). In the Bible šô'â has a range of meanings including "personal ruin or devastation" and "a wasteland or desert." Šô'â was first used to refer to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in 1939, but the phrase haš-šô'â ("the catastrophe") became established only after World War II. Holocaust has also been used to translate ḥurbān ("destruction"), another Hebrew word used to summarize the genocide of Jews by the Nazis."
(Source: American Heritage Dictionary, via dictionary.com)
I guess the casinos hide the gas chambers on the Indian reservations.
The relevant distinction was that under Hitler, you went to a concentration camp to die. In America, you went to a concentration camp to avoid being killed.
And of course the crime associated with the European treatment of the American natives was hardly limited to reservations. Were you aware that Columbus and his immediate followers wiped out all....repeat...all..of the native population of what is today Haiti/Domican Republic and the surrounding Antilles islands. I mean, in the most literal sense, every single native human being that was there, total genocide. It took only a half century. They were then replaced by imported slaves.
The relevant distinction was that under Hitler, you went to a concentration camp to die. In America, you went to a concentration camp to avoid being killed.
I suspect that I would prefer the latter option as its one hell of a distinction.
Gospel of John, the truth will make us free. Auschwitz would have been front page news if Germany had a USAmerica, Federal english, Bill of Rights for free speech sermons, freedom of congregation assembly, freedom to study & choose a religion, no compulsion in religion, adult baptism, adult circumcision, freedom of islamic self defense, right to bear arms.
And
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