As I recall, the totals for WW were 60 million with one-third of those being Russian. The actual estimated figure for Jewish deaths, according to Raul Hilberg, the acknowledged expert in the field, was 5.1 million. A million and a half Pole were also supposed to have been killed by Hitler but any mention by Poles of the subject invariably elicits accusations of "anti-Semitism." The number of dead as a result of wars since end of World War 2 must have passed the 30 million mark since 10 years ago the total was already 26 million and the number of deadly conflicts has only escalated. We do not even know how many Laotians died under the deadly US bombing raids because US criminality in that country has been obscured by the reference to the war as the Vietnam War, when the actual tonnage exceeded that dropped on Vietnam and was greater than that dropped on all of Europe in World War Two. If there had been the equivalent of Nuremberg trials after the war, would the US presidents and US generals, etc., who were responsible for that war which we know took the lives of two million Vietnamese, been any less guilty than the Nazis because the death totals didn't match up? What degree of culpability does the US and its officialdom have for openly supporting with weapons, money, and political cover the murder of hundreds of thousands in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Of abetting the Pinochet coup in Chile? Of indirectly supporting Pol Pot? Does the difference in the numbers dead make their crimes any less worse? One does not need to be a Nazi apologist to make an argument that Germany had been unfairly treated by the Western powers after World War I, and that Germany had suffered severely economically. What excuses for their behavior can be made for the US decision-makers, presiding as they were, over a mineral rich and agriculturally rich country, untouched by war, who were either directly or indirectly responsible for the heinous crimes and murders that have been committed in Southeast Asia and Latin America? Mandel's reference to democracy reminds me of Eisenhower's statement that the world had only two choices, US-style democracy or communism, an attitude infrequently echoed by know-nothing editorial writers. But Mandel's bitter disillusionment over the collapse of the USSR and it satellites and what incorrectly passed as socialism along with it, blinds him to the fact that the US has less political democracy than any other developed country and we didn't need this latest presidential ballot flap to prove it, although it helps. In no other developed country with a nominally democratic system do the corporations so control every aspect of society and its body politic as in the US. In sum, Mandel's defense of the system reminds me, sad to say, of the position of David Horowitz, sans the hyperbole. Jeff Blankfort William Mandel wrote: > Evidence presented at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial documented about 50,000,000 > deaths due to World War II, for which I would argue Hitler was unequivocally > responsible, despite the role of imperialist rivalries. Incidentally half of > those deaths, according to the evidence, consisted of civilians, almost entirely > in Europe. One-quarter of those civilians were Jews, the rest Russians and other > peoples of the USSR, Gypsies, gays, the mentally and physically disabled, and > civilians of western and southern Europe. > The Cold War powers of the West, of which the U.S. is the most important, > are responsible for many millions of deaths, both in unending local wars, in > civil wars stimulated and/or prolonged by American and NATO policy, hunger in > Iraq and elsewhere, the genocidal drop in population of the former Soviet > countries (consequent upon idiotic adoption of economic policies promoted by the > U.S., but not the result of American military action or blockade as of Iraq and > Cuba). Take all these together, and they do not approach the holocaust (small > "c": not the Zionist appropriation of that word) for which Hitler was > responsible. > Democracy is an easier way for capitalism to rule because it is better (or, > if you wish, a great deal less worse) than fascism. If you reject democracy, the > alternative is, at "best" a patriarchal form of rule under an absolute monarch > or one or another form of dictatorship, of which fascism is the worst. Is that > really what you prefer? > > Bill Mandel >
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