When, when, when, oh when will the truth come out? I, myself,
am strongly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons — one of mankind's
newest technological inventions — as an instrument of war.
However, I am just as strongly opposed (or perhaps more so) to
mankind's oldest instrument of war. Yes, you guessed it: FORCED
STARVATION. Forced starvation, perpetrated by the Japanese,
killed countless more innocent civilians than the U.S. bombing of
Japan's cities. (Forced starvation perpetrated by the Japanese also
killed more people in Vietnam in the space of a year than died in over
eight years of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam.) I have
no qualms about memorials to victims of nuclear bombs, but why isn't
there a memorial to the billions of people who have been starved to
death throughout history? I would like to suggest such a memorial.
We could have photos of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Japanese people
looking over a statue of the Earth, and smiling as countless bodies
pile up, using something like a MTV video montage to show all this.
(Maybe I could suggest this to MTV.) It would also be
appropriate to have all those who have and still do enslave other human
beings depicted, along with their victims, in some way. Where does
slavery go on virtually unchecked today? You guessed it: AFRICA.
So we wouldn't be able to show just Europeans and Americans as the
perpetrators of slavery memorial in such a memorial, we would also have
to include Africans (including the Africans who sold their own people
into slavery), Japanese, Native American Indians, and Muslims.... Well,
I guess we'd have to include just about everyone. Don't get me
wrong, Caucasian Europeans and Americans have been guilty of
atrocities. Why is it, as an American, that I always feel I have to
acknowledge that the U.S. has been guilty of atrocities? I guess I
worry that if I don't acknowledge the obvious, that my opinions won't
be taken seriously when I criticize another country - though if I were
say, Chinese, I wouldn't worry at all about criticizing the U.S.
without any mention of my own country's atrocities. In Karel
Van Wolferen's book "The Enigma of Japanese Power," he quotes Milovan
Djilas (a Yugoslav political leader who criticized communism, including
Tito's regime, and was jailed). Djilas said the country that is most
just is the country most aware of its injustices. I think you can guess
where I'm going, but I don't just want to pat America on the back for
acknowledging its injustices because I don't think that acknowledging
injustices makes them any less unjust. I think that if the
human race is going to progress as a species that it's important that
all cultures begin to look at themselves and acknowledge that they have
spawned evil, and that the evil will not go away if they solely blame
America, or "The Evil White Man" or anyone else for it. Nearly
every culture and every ethnic group on the face of the Earth has
spawned its own share of evil, but rarely do a people acknowledge that
they have done so.