(December 21, 2014 at 1:32 pm)Alex K Wrote:

Quote:This charge is not against the American people.

Hey, of course not, some of my best friends are American

---

(December 21, 2014 at 1:32 pm)Blackout Wrote: Saying Germany can't accuse other states of war crimes just because of what happened about 60 years ago is completely idiotic

70

69.

70 years ago germany was still doing it.

---

(December 21, 2014 at 10:22 pm)Beccs Wrote:

(December 21, 2014 at 3:49 am)psychoslice Wrote: Fuck the war, it was a long time ago, get over it.

I'm assuming you're talking about WW2?

In that case: Yeah, fuck the war it was a long time ago.

And fuck the Holocaust. It was a long time ago, too. Fucking Jews whining about ancient history!

See where this goes?

There's an old saying about those who forget history . . .

There is also a saying about living in the past.

(December 21, 2014 at 10:22 pm)Beccs Wrote: There's an old saying about those who forget history . . .

Quite agreed but these days I'm more concerned about fascism in my own country.

I think every nation should be vigilant. There was nothing uniquely German about Hitler.

(December 22, 2014 at 11:45 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(December 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm)Nope Wrote: The US has a bad track record of accepting that some of its past actions were crappy. I know people who still defend slavery.

From what I have been told, Germany has done a pretty good job of accepting its responsibility for what happened in WW2

This charge is not against the American people. It is against a specific administration that engaged in activities that it didn't openly share with the public. Cheney and the rest of his gang should stand trial but they won't.

In my fourth year of studying German in high school, we read German history books that detailed the rise of Nazism, how it happened, took an unflinching look at what happened and the terrible results for everyone in the world.

Germany has done an admirable job owning what happened. They've put us to shame considering we have yet to come to terms with our sins, including slavery, segregation and the genocide of Native Americans. Consider that there is only one nation I can think of that has used all three forms of WMD (chemical, biological and nuclear) not only in war but on civilian targets.

The one you want as a police detective is a truly repentant former criminal now working for law and order. Germany is not only qualified to lead the way on international law against crimes of war, aggression and against humanity, they are supremely qualified.

My deepest regret as an American is that clearly justice will have to be forced upon us. We don't seem to have the political will to do what is right and arrest these war criminals ourselves.

By the way, it can happen anywhere. Eternal vigilance is always required. The direction my country has taken in the last 12 years is unsettling in context to what I studied. I'm not saying we're about to open concentration camps tomorrow but we've unarguably taken some steps on the road to fascism.

I wish I could like your post a thousand times over Deist.

Quote:They've put us to shame considering we have yet to come to terms with our sins, including slavery, segregation and the genocide of Native Americans.

That's because we are still working to perfect the second and third issues.

I think every country no matter who, have done war crimes, maybe not as much as our old friend Hitler, but still war crimes are war crimes.

War crimes are what the losing side does.

(December 23, 2014 at 1:32 am)Minimalist Wrote: War crimes are what the losing side does.

Yep, like the Americans who lost the Vietnam war.

(December 23, 2014 at 1:32 am)Minimalist Wrote: War crimes are what the losing side does.

It's not as if the German war crimes hadn't been real. They were and on an atrocious level the world hadn't seen before

Point is, the Germans took their lessons. The winning side on the other hand, the one rightly accusing the Nazis of what they had done, didn't. Justice Jackson made it abundantly clear in his opening speech at Nuremberg, that the trial was about setting an example for the whole world to follow.

I think this is pointless, because:

1. Nothing will happen to Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney. As long as you win wars you can do whatever you want, including drones over sovereign countries, "collateral damage" and "enhanced interrogation techniques".

2. I would struggle to bring up a country which was powerful, but totally peaceful. If a country has the power to steal resources and expand its geopolitical control, it will.

3. People are just idiotic sheep. You always wonder; how did the germans believe that kind of propaganda? Then you hear lots of republican americans with "we bomb the shit out of your country to bring democracy", or "we are threatened by ISIS...or the taliban...or any goatherder out there"...and you lose faith in humanity.

Of course, Germany is significantly less corrupted by military power since '45 because it has none worth speaking of, and after the war has all but withdrawn from military operations till the 90s. So bombing people into oblivion and then lying to justify it wasn't really on the table. We're only one of the world's largest exporters of weapons, which is a whole nother can of worms, morally.