From: engelson-sean@cs.yale.edu (Sean Philip Engelson)
Subject: Re: PLEASE! SHOW UP IN WASHINGTON DC FOR BOSNIA (MAY 15th)
Organization: Yale AI Mobile Robotics Project
Lines: 41
Distribution: world
Reply-To: engelson-sean@cs.yale.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: fridge.ai.cs.yale.edu


In article <C6z32r.AH9@news2.cis.umn.edu>, prabhak@giga.cs.umn.edu (Satya Prabhakar) writes:
|> Michael Sells <m_sells@haverford.edu> writes:
|> >
|> > This is not a fresh case of
|> >>ethnic cleansing but just another chapter in the continuing saga
|> >>of intense mutual hatred, destruction,... 
|> >
|> >Every place on earth is the scene of a saga of mutual hatred and
|> >destruction.  The holocaust was not a "fresh case."  It was another
|> >chapter in a 900 year history of attacks on Jews in Europe.  That didn't
|> >make it acceptable. and Balkan history does not make the genocide against
|> >Bosnian Muslims acceptable.
|> 
|> I guess that it was not acceptable because Germany *also* chose
|> a path of aggression simultaneously that put the interests of
|> other countries in peril. I wonder whether US or other countries
|> would have risked themselves if only Jews were persecuted and
|> Hitler had no imperialist ambitions. (I am no student of history
|> and I am just asking questions.)

Actually, the record of the Allies activities, in the face of
incontrovertible evidence as to what the Nazis (may they rot in hell)
were doing, clearly points to the conclusion that they would have done
nothing.  The railways to the camps were not bombed, despite the ease
of doing so.  The US, the "place of refuge" allowed in a bare pittance
of Jews from Europe, primarily for public relations, so that the
government could say it was "doing something".  Many ships with
refugees were turned away from US shores; some found refuge in Cuba or
South America, many others sunk or had to return to Europe (with
predictable consequences).  The hope today is that we have
collectively learned a lesson, and are less complacent to ignore other
countries' "internal affairs".  The sad reality is that this does not
seem to be the case.


-- 
Sean Philip (Shlomo) Engelson		
Yale Department of Computer Science	
Box 2158 Yale Station			
New Haven, CT 06520