The ugly face of USstyle justice 4202

I do not think it was childish to say that the Germans and Japanese deserved what they got in World War II.

If you start a war with no rules, as the Japanese and Germans did, you should not cry that the same lack of rules should be applied to you. German and Japanese treatment of POWs and civilians during the war was nothing short of barbaric. How many Russian POWs of Germany survived their internment? Where was the German honor at Malmady?

When the Germans and Japanese occupied countries they had conquered, they set about on various programs to loot the nations they invaded, they rooted out various ethnicities that they did not like and exterminated or enslaved them. Germany turned Poland into a rest mill for millions of Jews. Her postwar victory plans envisioned exterminating every slavic person and resettling all the eastern lands with German citizens. Similarly, Japan enslaved vast numbers of Koreans and Phillipinos, performed biological expermiments on the Chinese.

When the United States in turn occupied Germany and Japan, what did we do? Did we send out little vans with Einzatzgruppen to go around and randomly shoot civilians so much that even hardened SS sought a more "humane" solution of gas chambers because even they could not stomach shooting more than a million defenseless people a year. Did we send out soldiers to rape and kill every woman in a town like the Japanse did at Nanking and countless other places?

There were many who argued that Germany should be permanently reduced to a third world nation with only a limited agricultural economy, or that we should have simply permanently blockaded Japan until she starved out of existence. Instead, we set out to quickly rebuild both of those nations and inject democratic traditions.

Were we ruthless in winning the war? Perhaps, but, we were often less ruthless than those that we opposed.

Even in Iraq today, where the insurgents that we fight do not honor the geneva convention, where they do target literally their own people and behead and plant their POWs, the worst that we have done is engage in tactics of humiliation at Abu Ghraib, and the soldiers that did so were punished. Where does Zarqawi call upon his people to treat their POWs more humanely? Where is the geneva convention of an insurgency that attacks truck drivers for delivering food, executes policemen for daring to arrest someone making plants, beheads electrical contractors for the appalling gall to restore the nations power supply, beheads water contractors because the terrible occupiers want to restore water service to Sadr City?

Even in colonial relationships, yes, including the tragedy of the Phillipines, Americans have as a rule been much more human and enlightened than their European counterparts. Look at what the French did in their retreat from their African colonies! They ripped out all the infrastructure they had built to spite the newly independent people. Generators, power stations, water facilities, were all ripped out and sent back to France in the ultimate show of spite. This was in the 1950s and 1960s.

You moan about the tragedy of the Phillipines of 100 years ago. I'm talking about European arrogance that occured within our family lifetimes. How many people did the French kill in Algeria? How many did they torture? I dated a girl once whose father was tortured by the French in the civil war and they didn't just pile people up naked as was done at Abu Ghraib. They beat you with rubber hoses until your skin cracked and bled, they broke limbs and shattered pevises. Oh yeah, I'm quite familiar with the French enlightenment. And look at all the wonderful France does on the continent today? In her own country?

You bemon the loss of civil rights in America, but in America, a muslim can wear head scarves and routinely do, but that is STUPIDLY illegal in France. The day after 9-11, President Bush told the American people not to take out against Islamic communities, and they did not. In the Netherlands, a journalist is liquidateed and the next thing you know, mosques in that supposedly enlightened land are being burned to the ground.

Let's not forget, that in the USA, every citizen has a right to jury trial, by his peers, not a panel of judges. Let's not forget that, even though we know the Patriot act is a mistake, much of it will in fact expire. Let's not forget that Europeans have been and always will be subject to the same wiretapping and arrest provisions that you bemoan in the Patriot act.