I believe the U.S. is the most liberal country .And it is most developed country.How did she deal with the dark past. Some people say the U.S faced the past appropriately:But others disagree.
It was a case revolving around James Bacque’s Other Losses, another controversial book that caught the media attention in North America in the late 1980s to the early 1990s.In this book, Bacque contended that the Allies, the United States and France in particular, deliberately starved to death about 800,000 to one million German prisoners of war (POWs) in their custody immediately after World War II.
Few people will doubt the authenticity of the individual cases of atrocity detailed in John H.D. Rabe’s diary as quoted by Chang in her book. Likewise, Bacque’s critics did not deny the truthfulness of the stories narrated by eyewitnesses to the conditions of Allied POW camps in Germany. The stories of some good-willed people who tried to save victims are also true
both Chang and Bacque emphasized the number of victims to illustrate the magnitude of these atrocities.
Both narrated stories about the heroes amid the atrocities, producing an
effect of further highlighting the malicious character of the perpetrators. Finally, bothassailed the collective indifference to the incidents.
Despite these similarities, commentators, albeit of two totally different groups, approached these two works in different manners
From the beginning, critics of Bacque doubted his estimate of death toll and what he postulated as a motive behind the alleged mass killing. A reviewer of Other Losses raised the question of the “intrinsic impossibility that so vast an atrocity could so long have been utterly hidden.”Later,professional historians examined primary sources carefully and refuted almost every crucial conclusion reached by Bacque in Eisenhower and the German POWs. In contrast, except for some critical reviewers, many of those who reviewed Chang’s Rape of Nanking immediately after its publication accepted her contention at face value without careful scrutiny.
one cannot overlook the oddity, if not a double standard, in a
historiographical contrast. On the one hand, after careful scrutiny, the reviewers of
Bacque’s Other Losses rejected his thesis that the deliberate policy of starvation against German POWs resulted in a large number of fatalities matching the number of A-bomb victims. On the other hand, the reviewers of Chang’s Rape of Nanking either implicitly or explicitly embraced a similar contention regarding the perpetrators’ intent and death toll in Nanking before or without commensurate probe or investigation. One reason for this contrast is that whereas Bacque’s Other Losses was a monograph on an atrocity allegedly committed by the Allies--the United States in particular--Chang’s work recounted an atrocity committed by the Japanese military, America’s former enemy. But another factor may explain this contrast. Truly regrettably, it is a long-standing social problem in this country, namely racism(emphasis mine) and this is most likely another ingredient that made Chang’s book so popularlink
This link show the similar thesis.(I can not cite it because I noticed it was prohibited.)
In a nutshell, the arugement for atomic bombs that is, it was necessary to save lives, is essecially similar to the Japanese counterparts that argue Japanese did no wrongs during the war.
What do you think? For a non-American, it is obvious that the U,S. has problems too.But as I said somewhere, I am not saying two wrongs make right, but I am saying we can learn from the wrongs.We will examine it on the next thread.
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Basque's statistics, arguments, and documentation were subjected to careful and detailed study by a conference of historians (including Germans) organized by Stephen Ambrose, the director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Papers from the conference have been published6 and show that Basque misread, misinterpreted, or ignored the relevant documents and that his mortality statistics are simply impossible. However, the papers do show that some of the camps, particularly the transit camps that became known as the Rheinwiesenlager,7 were initially lethal, with thousands of German POWs dying, and that these deaths were the responsibility of the American government. While the final toll of the American transit camps was far from that alleged by Bacque, it still could have reached 56,000 dead (lines 232 and 233). Detailed statistical studies by the German Maschke Commission set up to determine the fate of German POWs arrived at a figure of 4,537 dead for the most deadly Rheinwiesenlager camps (line 229). Other estimates in this range are also available (lines 228, 230 to 231). As a result of all this, I ignore Bacque's estimates and consolidate the others as shown (line 237)STATISTICS OF DEMOCIDE
This account make the stark contrast with his treatment the massacre by Japan's "Savage" Military. I am not sure if he took the debate by historians about the number of victims in Nanjin Massacre this much seriously. and though I respect his job, I wonder why he did not use adjective "savage" to the US Military.
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US-led forces kill several in Afghan raid
Reuters
Tuesday, December 12, 2006; 2:59 AM
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S.-led troops killed at least four people, including a teenage girl, in an operation in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Khost on Tuesday, the force and villagers said.
But there were conflicting accounts about who was killed in the pre-dawn raid in Dornami village in a province where the Taliban and their Islamic allies are highly active. PHOTOS
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Residents say the U.S.-led force, backed by Afghan militias, broke into a house, drawing fire from the occupants who thought they were thieves. Four people were killed and some seven wounded -- all of them civilians, they said.
The U.S.-led coalition said in a statement the raid killed five people -- four suspected terrorists and a young girl.
The troops requested the surrender of those in the compound.
"The suspected terrorists refused to comply with verbal warnings and began firing," the statement said.
"Enemies of the Afghan government continue to place women and children in harm's way by conducting illegal activities within common living areas, placing entire families at risk," the statement said.
The U.S.-led coalition has about 8,000 troops under its command in Afghanistan, after overthrowing the Taliban's hard-line Islamist government in 2001. NATO leads about 32,000 soldiers in the country.
Thousands of civilians have been killed during fighting since the Taliban's ouster. Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for the foreign forces and President Hamid Karzai's government, which largely relies on foreign funds and on foreign soldiers.washingtonpos
See also Germans attack united States
France denies role in Rwandan genocide魚拓
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