Asymmetrical Information

On an even more basic level, it's not really clear how one could ever definitively distinguish genocides which "arose as a tactic in a war" from those which "didn't". At least, if one were looking for reasons not to do anything, as these guys plainly are.

Surely Hitler believed that his Nation was at "war" with The Jews, and that his Solution was simply a tactic (or strategy) in fighting it, for example. More recently, I'm sure that Milosevic would have claimed as much re: ethnic Albanians. This razor doesn't really cut anything.

"What, then, makes genocide so special?"

Are you really saying that all 13 million Jews being wiped from the face of the earth would be less tragic than, say, 13-million-and-one Chinese people dying while 1.4 billion live?

Way to play right into the stereotype of the cold, unfeeling Randian.

Let's turn that around: so you're saying that if 13 million Chinese people died, that wouldn't matter as much as if 13 million Jews died?

Let's turn it around further: should America stop giving aid to Israel, and start giving it to small threatened tribes in the Amazon, whose cultures will be wiped out if they can't keep squatters from taking their land? By your logic, 1,000 Amazonian indians are way more important than 6.9 million Israelis, since there will still be lots of Jews left if all the Israelis die, while a couple of thousand people may represent an entire culture of hunter-gatherers.

Obviously, I think it is a tragedy when cultures die. But obviously, we as a nation don't, since we don't do a damn thing to keep it from happening, as it is around the world. So that can't be the important part of genocide--and indeed, I'm aware of no genocides that actually succeeded in eliminating all the members of a target group, or even in pushing them down below the level of cultural sustenance. (OF course, I wouldn't be, would I? Those cultures have disappeared in the mists of time.)

"This razor doesn't really cut anything."

Good point. Has there *ever* been a genocide that didn't involve an inter-group conflict that might be considered at least a civil war? The Rwandan genocide very definitely arose out of an ongoing struggle between a Hutu-lead Rwandan government and Tutsi-lead rebel group (the RPF). Indeed the genocide was only stopped when the RPF prevailed. Intervening earlier would have inevitably meant getting embroiled in that civil war.

So was this then not a 'real' genocide? Is it a good thing the world stood by and watched while the butchers swung their machetes?

Joe Grossberg,

So how many Chinese would have to die before you'd think it was as bad as killing 13 million Jews? All 1.4 billion?

If you want to place a higher value of Jewish life than others, fine. I'm just not sure why you'd expect other to share views.

The smarter half of the unReality-based Community recognizes that, given Saddam's slaughter of Kurds and Marsh Arabs, calls for U.S. military action in Darfur retroactively support intervention in Iraq.

Thus the rowbacks and qualifications.

Jane:

"Let's turn that around: so you're saying that if 13 million Chinese people died, that wouldn't matter as much as if 13 million Jews died?"

Yes; I am saying that it would matter slightly less. But the difference between one Jew dying and one Chinese person dying is negligible.

"By your logic, 1,000 Amazonian indians are way more important than 6.9 million Israelis"

No, what I'm saying is that all 1000 members of an Amazonian tribe dying is worse than 1001 Israelis dying.

"I'm aware of no genocides that actually succeeded in eliminating all the members of a target group"

The Tasmanian Aborigines are the canonical example: http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/tasmania.html It is truly an awful story, and worth knowing.

Roy:

"So how many Chinese would have to die before you'd think it was as bad as killing 13 million Jews? All 1.4 billion?"

Somewhere between 13 million and 1.4 billion, but way closer to the former. I agree with Jane's partial statement that "I think it is a tragedy when cultures die". That "tragedy" adds to the other, numerous negative costs of mass-murder. By how much -- one life or one billion lives -- I'm not able to quantify.

"I'm just not sure why you'd expect other to share views."

I think that killing people, with the intention of eradicating their culture too, is extra-evil -- just like murdering a child would be worse than murdering an adult, or murdering Martin Luther King, Jr. was worse than murdering Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not simply a matter of the body count.

Lots of ministers admonish Christians to avoid being "deaf to the cries of the oppressed."
How does one do that in Darfur, or in numerous other places, without spending all the blood and treasure of the United States?

I happen to believe that Chris B is right. The following from Yglesias' article reinforces the point:
"Consider Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurdistan, another good candidate for the title of an ambiguous genocide. The Human Rights Watch report on the subject doesn't see the ambiguity, but acknowledges the basic reality that Saddam did not, in fact, kill all of Iraq's Kurds. What's more, the report states that "outside pressure . . . was not a significant contributing factor to the amnesty" that ended the slaughter. Rather, "it is clear from the Fifth Corps report on the Final Anfal that the decision to declare a general amnesty was made because Baghdad was convinced by September 6 that the peshmerga forces had been crushed." The inhumanity directed at civilians was, in other words, a military tactic, aimed at a military goal, the crushing of Kurdistan's armed guerillas who had risen in rebellion against the Iraqi state. "

Yglesias seems to me to be more concerned with justifying opposition to the invasion of Iraq (while approving intervention in Kosovo) than with stopping the slaughter in Darfur.

As to his questions that must be answered, why? How about...first stop the killing, then devise the long term solution.

Regards,
Neil

I think the point is not that dying in a genocide is worse than dying in war, but rather that it might be possible to get an enforceable international agreement that genocide is bad. The US isn't going to agree that war per se is bad anytime soon, and for good reason: it believes, correctly, that it needs to be able to resort to war for self-defense and for the defense of its allies. (Likewise, e.g., China.) But it might be possible to work toward an international consensus that there is no justification for genocide, and that the world will act to stop genocide when it occurs.

Way to play right into the stereotype of the cold, unfeeling Randian. - JG

...who then goes on to, in one breath, propose that we should value (weigh?) people due to their racial/tribal/cultural identifications more than their individual values -- and makes an exception for Dr. MLK, Jr. vs. Jeffrey Dahmer. Was your point that a minority preacher is more valuable than a white male? Or, perhaps, we should value individuals for their potential or accomplishments?

Being able to make judgments rather than stereotypes makes you rational, not cold.

Best way to intervene:

Arm the victims of the slaughter. A similar tactic brought everyone to the negotiating table in Bosnia.

If the Janjaweed and the Sudanese military are faced with heavy return fire, overall death rates will go down, and Sudan will have to reconsider the wisdom of its policy in Darfur.

So Yglesias endorses a war tactic of ending guerilla war by exterminating the people the guerillas hide among. We could have won the Vietnam War if we'd been willing to do that, but it seems like even accidental civilian deaths were intolerable to leftists in that war.

So what's the difference? If Yglesias just starts with the assumption that the USA is always on the wrong side, he really ought to move to a country he likes better. Or else is it who is getting killed - that is, does he think it is OK for Muslims to slaughter Christians, but terrible for Christians to kill non-Christians?

lpdbw:

My point was to contradict the notion that all lives have the exact same value, not to highlight the race of the examples.

For example, I agree with your notion that we should definitely value people for their individual accomplishments, contributions and potential.

But that is not the beginning and end of a human being's worth, and endangering the continued existence of a cultural group by slaughtering its members is inherently worse than simple murder.

A culture has value that is more than simply a total of the lives of its members.

If you accept that premise (which I do), then it follows that killing the last x members of ethnic/cultural/linguistic/religious group A is more damaging than killing x members of a larger group, B.

"Being able to make judgments rather than stereotypes makes you rational, not cold."

Being able to see a comparison of a Nobel Prize winner and a psychopath, and focusing in on their skin color makes you racist, not rational.

At the very least, you seem a bit preoccupied with race -- for example, by labelling MLK as a mere preacher (rather than someone who fought against horrible injustice) and Dahmer was a murderer-rapist-cannibal (not a simply a "white male") -- talk about reductionist!

Joe, the trouble with the Tasmanian Aborigines as canonical example is that their case would appear to have been faked - see Windschuttle's "The Fabrication of Aboriginal History".

I'm afraid I really don't understand. Maybe I'm some sort of moral lackwit, but I don't care about the Holocaust because it slaughtered six million Jews.

I do. The per-capita contribution of Jews to human wealth and culture is profound. Other cultures - less so. Losing every Jew in the 20th century would have been far more crippling to humanity than losing a similar amount of Chinese. I'm not envisioning the world being significantly different if the PRC had killed 64 million Chinese instead of 77 million.

dearieme:

I was not familiar with Windschuttle's work on the subject (and I should have been, because I spent a semester in Australia, in the 90's). Thank you for the pointer.

"So Yglesias endorses a war tactic of ending guerilla war by exterminating the people the guerillas hide among."

This is grossly unfair. Yglesias didn't endorse that tactic at all, he merely tried to make a distinction between it and genocide. Had you actually read Yglesias, this would have been clear:

"What comes to mind when non-lawyers hear the word 'genocide,' however, is something akin to the events of the Holocaust, where a regime pursues the destruction of an ethnic group as an end in and of itself. Without denying that monstrous things are being done in Darfur, I don't think that genocide -- in this sense -- is what's happening."

Joe Grossberg,

Thanks for the clarification. Now that I more clearly understand what you meant, I'd say I largely agreed with your position.

cory:

Or, put another way, genocide doesn't have to start as the original impetus; a group could start out with one reason and then have it evolve (devolve?) from "defeat the opposition fighters" into "eliminate the population that the opposition fighters belong to".

Joe Grossberg,

Why should we value a culture per se. For example say a culture were to die out due to defections ("I don't want to be an aborigine. I want to be a dentist."). Is that necessarily a problem? If so, why?

alkali:

I think the point is not that dying in a genocide is worse than dying in war, but rather that it might be possible to get an enforceable international agreement that genocide is bad. The US isn't going to agree that war per se is bad anytime soon, and for good reason: it believes, correctly, that it needs to be able to resort to war for self-defense and for the defense of its allies. (Likewise, e.g., China.) But it might be possible to work toward an international consensus that there is no justification for genocide, and that the world will act to stop genocide when it occurs.

Right, but because "enforcing" the agreement means military intervention, Yglesias needs to define "genocide" upward so that military intervention will never actually be justified to stop genocide, at least while a Republican is President.

But it might be possible to work toward an international consensus that there is no justification for genocide, and that the world will act to stop genocide when it occurs.

As I recall, that was an original impetus for coining "genocide": to give the behavior such a grim name that no sane government would want to engage in it, and no sane government would stand by idly as another government or entity engaged in it.

Well, the word had that effect on some, but instead of producing practical results to match, it brought creative definitioneering with which to avoid ever identifying anything as being a genocide.

My point was to contradict the notion that all lives have the exact same value, not to highlight the race of the examples.

Which is an unmitigated slippery slope in the wrong hands. Contrawise, it is possible to understand all human lives as having the same fundamental value, but that the value can be reduced by the life-bearer: for example, Jefferey Dahmer killed and canibalized people, therefore by his own actions he made his life forfeit.

It is equally possible to understand that a choice of imperfect solutions will result in loss of life regardless. For example, accidental civilian casualties in a military-targeted war are tragic, but given a choice of imperfect solutions, these may be unavoidable in order to cessate a greater evil that will destroy even more people in the long run. This decision, too, can be made without altering a fundamental perspective on the value of an individual life.

On the other hand, a belief that 1000 people in sole possession of a culture are marginally less valuable than 1001 people of another who are not the sole possessors of a culture, is to trade people's lives as pawns based solely on their perceive utility to you. And that's just ugly.

It may be expedient to recognize that there are situations where "x" people are in danger of slaughter, and yet one cannot practically make a positive difference by intervening...but that is not the same thing.

genocide n. The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

What do we even mean by genocide? ... I'd argue that what comes to mind is less connected to an ethnic group as with the size and composition of the targets: genocide means killing very large numbers of civilians, not as collateral damage in a war, but as a primary aim. The ethnic part is decidedly secondary;

I'd argue the opposite - the ethnic aspect is primary, while the composition and volume of deaths is decidedly secondary, else genocide is nothing but a common side effect and purpose of war, and the US should be considered a regular perpetrator of it (eg, Nagasaki, Dresden, North Korea, Vietnam, sanctions on Iraq, etc.).

Your (commonly used by the left) watered-down / reinterpretation of the term trivializes both the Holocaust and the word created to describe it, and opens us up to charges of genocide on a regular basis. I find it unfortunate (though not surprising given your liberal formative years) that you support their re-definition of the word.

While I appreciate Mr. Grossberg's attempt to stake ground, I have to echo anonymouse's concern about omniscient claims of relative human value. The flip side of his argument (that not all lives have the same value) was used in part by the Nazi's to justify the slaughter of millions of Jews, homosexuals, etc. Once we state that a person can rationalize inherent human value, we have to accept the use of that rationalization, which can be counter to our original intent.

Alternatively, and Bill hints at this, the culture argument underlies certain anti-globalization arguments that pervasive world brands inhibit or eliminate local brands and culture. Thankfully, persons such as Mr. Grossberg are able to inform the rest of us of the error of our ways and, if given the opportunity, prevent us from exercising our free will.

The slippery slope of Grossberg descends many ways.

nrc:

"persons such as Mr. Grossberg ... if given the opportunity, prevent us from exercising our free will"

You're making an enormous leap there.

I never claimed any "omniscience". (Does "somewhere between 13 million and 1.4 billion" sound anywhere near omniscient?)

Nor did I say a thing about "anti-golbalization" or "branding". I'm talking about literal murder, not assimilation.

"The slipperly slope of Grossberg descends many ways." ?

Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? Did you even read what I had to say, or are you just pinning my name to a fascist straw-man in your head?

The per-capita contribution of Jews to human wealth and culture is profound. Other cultures - less so. Losing every Jew in the 20th century would have been far more crippling to humanity than losing a similar amount of Chinese. I'm not envisioning the world being significantly different if the PRC had killed 64 million Chinese instead of 77 million.

I definitely agree with this position -- despite being Chinese myself.

Jane Galt, how much do you know about Jewish contribution to modern civilization? I can understand why all the fuss about the Holocaust doesn't make sense to you if you've never been made aware of their unusual role.

Are you really saying that all 13 million Jews being wiped from the face of the earth would be less tragic than, say, 13-million-and-one Chinese people dying while 1.4 billion live?

Yes, that's what she's saying.

Way to play right into the stereotype of the cold, unfeeling Randian

Way to play the role of the Jew who thinks non-Jews are inferior. You just came right out and admitted you think Jewish life is worth more than Chinese life, for no more reason than that there are a lot of Chinese people around.

Dan:

That is precisely what I *didn't* say. Read the whole thread: "What I'm saying is that all 1000 members of an Amazonian tribe dying is worse than 1001 Israelis dying."

I also think that members of smaller groups are worth even more than individual Jews, by your caricature of my statements ... so I guess that makes me a self-hating Jew?

Is it ugly that I would donate a kidney to save my brothers life but not a random stranger? I’m valuing one person’s life more than another. Presumably most here support US intervention in Iraq and not Danfor because a peaceful democratic Iraq has more perceived utility to the US than a peaceful democratic Sudan. Not because there are more lives at stake in Iraq than in Danfor.

Genocide has malice that ordinary warfare doesn’t, and the traditional justice system distinguishes murder under special circumstances. You might get the death penalty for murder during one rape, but not because you ran over couple of people trying to escape the police after committing a robbery which is also felony murder.

The true evil of genocide is that the people who engage in it have lost the ability to perceive others as being truly human. There is no such thing as "the Jews," or "the Europeans," or any other group. They are abstractions. The reality is that every person who has ever lived has been, in the final analysis, a minority group of one. And very few of them indeed have been totally devoid of value, although such individuals do exist. If people must be judged, it should be upon their own individual merits, not as a member of some abstract group.

When you start doing that, people cease being people in your eyes. In essence, they become like strains of yeast to a brewer. If a particular strain imparts undesirable characteristics to the beer you're brewing, you get rid of them. If one strain is seen to be superior to any other, they are shown favor by allowing them to prosper and grow. Its easy to do. They're just faceless bacteria.

But that's exactly what happens when you start to view people merely in terms of how they fit into a group identity, whether it is based on economics, race, or whatever. Sooner or later they just acquire the status of a faceless yeast culture. And who really cares what you do to a yeast culture? Unless of course, you happen to like what you perceive to be the mass characteristics of any certain strain.

The modern and seemingly growing emphasis upon group identity is truly ugly. That is the path that the communists (economic groups) and the nazis (racial identity) have plotted before us. Will we follow? We have seen where that leads.

Darn, TC made the point I was going to try to make. At least he did it better than I would have.
Anyways, to add to that, and back to what seems to be the original discussion, would we have been as willing for Europeans to take America to task for Ruby Ridge?

"
"they're farming on land where I want to graze my sheep", or "their land has all the oil on it"
"

Doesn't that sum up 99% of wars? If you don't go to war for land, power, or money, why else go to war? Saying that war isn't justified isn't going to solve anything..

Is it ugly that I would donate a kidney to save my brothers life but not a random stranger?

No, of course not, unless your own actions somehow directly precipitated the random stranger's organ failure. That's not the same thing as what I was talking about, either. How, exactly, did you make that leap?

Joe Grossberg's thesis:
"My genocide was worse than *your* genocide! Nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah...!"

tcobb:

"If people must be judged, it should be upon their own individual merits, not as a member of some abstract group ... you start to view people merely in terms of how they fit into a group identity."

That's a false dichotomy; I think that *both* matter. Naturally, the individual merits are far more important, but it's not an either/or proposition.

Joe -- the individual -- is who am I, first and foremost. But dig a little deeper, and a lot of those "individual qualities" -- e.g. being American, libertarian, of Jewish ancestry, atheist, male -- are partly defined by the groups that I belong to, in my mind or others'.

Witness, for example, how Dan and RMc decry my parochialism, yet are quick to hold up my ethnicity as relevant to my remarks.

Meanwhile, James DeBenedetti (not a "Jewish name") and Dog of Justice (who states he is Chinese and not Jewish) are willing to make bolder assertions, yet (based on the lack of counter-argument) seem to have more credibility.

But that's exactly what happens when you start to view people merely in terms of how they fit into a group identity, whether it is based on economics, race, or whatever. Sooner or later they just acquire the status of a faceless yeast culture. And who really cares what you do to a yeast culture? Unless of course, you happen to like what you perceive to be the mass characteristics of any certain strain.

I think everyone here agrees that such an attitude is evil.

That said, there is a paradox. Just like the second law of thermodynamics, natural selection is a statistical law that operates whether or not we like it. The popular sentiment seems to be that, if we refuse to acknowledge even the existence of this force in polite discourse, we won't be in danger of using it for sophisticated Nazi-style evil again. There may be some truth to this.

But we should be shrewd in our blindness. While we construct a society based on the ideal of equal opportunity for all, we need to make sure that we never depend on the noble lie of equality of capability. While we continue liberating our women, we need to quietly keep an eye on the demographics, lest our dream flourish for one glorious generation only to then be destroyed by the ruthless arithmetic of natural selection.

Somebody has to quietly pay attention to the ugly details of civilization. We don't mind, and we in fact encourage your double-checking our work. We just get irritated when we get told for the thousandth time that those details don't exist.

The reason why Grossberg gets more flack than others is that what he refuses to accept the underlying themes and logical conclusions to be drawn from his line of argument. When respondents take the rationale underpinning his argument (that death has moral differentiation based upon ethnic grounds; that preservation of individual cultural groups or identity is the highest value) to possible conclusion (e.g., the Turks asserting that mass murder of the Armenian ethnic group was morally acceptable during WWI; that we should stop multinational from promoting their mass market goods abroad because they homogenize other cultures), he stammers that following his claims to their conclusion was not what he meant. He wants to play philosophical basketball, but only when he's allowed to score. If we circumscribe the world to allow only the interpretations that make our value positions look benevolent, then this whole exercise is a waste of time.

"that we should stop multinational(s) from promoting their mass market goods abroad because they homogenize other cultures"

Joe's claim was that it's especially heinous to destroy a culture by murdering everyone, down to the last person. I don't think that this automatically implies that, if we suspect a culture may be dying out on its own, we then have the right to trap a group of people for generations, forcing them to stagnate in order to populate our own 'living museum' that we can view now and then.

The people that say that they're trying to stop multinationals from taking advantage of certain cultures are really trying to prevent individuals from making their own choices. Joe's opposition to mass murder doesn't automatically mean that he views cultural minorities as his own personal puppets.

I appreciate the consideration of my comments, Ann, but the point wasn't that Joe would make that claim, but that others could (and have) used the values underlying his position to make such claims. Joe's equivocation on genocide places ethnic scarcity as the high value. Historically, it has been a small leap from valuing ethnic scarcity to ethnicity alone and, thereby, justifying the same acts that Joe deplores. Whether Joe would make that claim or take that act is irrelevant. Once you support a particular value, you should be adult enough to accept the conclusions that others will draw from it, even if it doesn't accord with your own.

It is a uniquely Christian notion that all lives are equal. No other religion agrees with this notion. One of your readers argues that Jews have contributed more to humanity and so their lives are better than non-Jewish lives. Many people would be seduced by the proposition that the life of Einstein or Lenin or Mohammed or Franklin or Washington or Caesar at age 17 would be worth the lives of 1,000,000 ordinary people.

The concept of genocide is based on the implicit argument that some lives are worth more than others. That the life of the last of the Mohigans is more important than the sum of all the lives of all those Mohigans who died before him simply because when he dies so does the Gens (and, of course, Indian Casino rights in New York State and Pennsylvania).

Indeed, in many civilizations ordinary people are sacrificed for the good of extra-ordinary people. This practice is normal and abhorrent to every good Christian. In Darfur and in Germany people were sacrificed for the greater good literally by the carload. As an ordinary person I strenuously object and I plan to write a strongly worded letter to the Times.

nrc:

Your assertion that "historically, it has been a small leap from valuing ethnic scarcity to ethnicity alone" is just false.

It is a *huge* leap from my attributing a modicum of value to groups to your inference that "preservation of individual cultural groups or identity is the highest value".

"Once you support a particular value, you should be adult enough to accept the conclusions that others will draw from it, even if it doesn't accord with your own."

You sound like the libertarian extremists who content that public highways are a hair's-breadth away from full-on Communism.

The world is not black-and-white, and I don't accept the slippery slope argument.

Joe Grossberg,

Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to attack you here, but I think the argument is that once you accept the notion of cultural value per se, you have a hard time arguing that the maintenance of cultural diversity is an illegitimate aim. If your argument boils donwn to an issue of black and white versus shades of gray, aren't you simply differing with the position nrc describes by a simple estimation of relative prices?

Bill:

Yes, I am saying "groups matter" but not "groups üaut;ber alles". At least that's what I'm trying to express.

One of your readers argues that Jews have contributed more to humanity and so their lives are better than non-Jewish lives.

No. What I said was the loss of every Jew in the 20th century would have been far worse for humanity than the loss of an equal number of largely illiterate peasant farmers. Whether or not any particular Jew is better than any particular non-Jew is a separate question altogether.

What I said was the loss of every Jew in the 20th century would have been far worse for humanity than the loss of an equal number of largely illiterate peasant farmers

Your argument relies on the unproven and unprovable assumption that some non-Jew wouldn't have made similar contributions. Would there have been no theory of relativity without Einstein? Hard to say.

You're also ignoring the societal costs associated with the existance of Jews. Trillions of inflation-adjusted dollars have been spent fighting people who use Jews as scapegoats for seizing power. Would they have been able to find a similar, equally-effective scapegoat without centuries of anti-semetism to tap into? That's questionable. If the European portion of WW2 could have been avoided in the absence of Jewish scapegoats then it is indeed entirely possible that the annihilation of all Jews in, say, 1900 AD would have ultimately been a significant savings, in wealth and lives, for humanity as a whole.

Food for thought.

Your argument relies on the unproven and unprovable assumption that some non-Jew wouldn't have made similar contributions.

Like I said, there's pretty compelling evidence of outsized Jewish contributions to humanity - e.g., they've won 22% of the world's Nobel prizes (26% in physics, 29% in medicine, 38% in economics). The Chinese outnumber Jews by more than 100:1 - what portion of the world's Nobel prizes have they won?

If the European portion of WW2 could have been avoided in the absence of Jewish scapegoats then it is indeed entirely possible that the annihilation of all Jews in, say, 1900 AD would have ultimately been a significant savings, in wealth and lives, for humanity as a whole.

Food for thought.

More like BS for thought. Can you find a single nation that declared war on Germany in order to save the Jews? Do you truly think nationalism and socialist workers' parties would not exist in Europe, save for the presence of Jewish scapegoats? Have you ever read the Nazi's 25 points? Most of their demands would fit comfortably within the Democratic Party's national platform.

Keith Windschuttle's claims that there was no genocide in tasmania are pretty controversial. It's far from a settled question. If you lived in Australia in the 90s you wouldn't have heard about it because his book didn't come out until 2002, and there was a big debate about how valid his claims were. He outright accused some pretty respected historians of falsifying evidence of genocide, and a lot of academics felt he didn't have the evidence to back it up. A lot of his work is based around attacking conventional historical wisdom, and he's certainly good at raising questions, but in my opinion, in thirty years time, a lot of his claims are going to be considered fairly unsubstantiated.

Time might tell, leah, but I was struck by one of his early demolitions of an alleged massacre of mainland Aborigines: he showed that the key "eye witness" was in India at the time, not Australia. Similarly, whatever happened in Tasmania, he has undoubtedly shown that one of the historians arguing for genocide was lying by citing evidence that did not exist. If they've got to invent key evidence, it does rather imply that there isn't worthwhile evidence available. Of course Windschuttle's under attack: he's shown good reason to believe that a large proportion of Australian historians have been crooked. Quite the opposite of holocaust denial, interestingly, where the deniers are either mistaken or, simply, crooks.

James:

I know you said "most of their demands" and not "all", but the Nazi-DNC similarities but this doesn't exactly sound like Howard Dean talking ...

"3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.

4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.

8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since the 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich."

The idea that gays and Jews suffered similar levels of persecution under the Nazis is not well supported. According to Holocaust Teacher Resource Center, about 100,000 German homosexuals were imprisoned during the 12-year regime. That appears to be less than 10% of the gay male population (lesbians were basically ignored). Most of these served normal prison sentences; something like 8,000-10,000 died in the concentration camps, but from mistreatment and arbitrary killings rather than systematic mass killing. (The 60% death rate of gay camp inmates was, however, higher than that of any group besides Jews.)

There was no organized persecution of homosexuals in the occupied territories -- presumably what Untermenschen did with each other did not threaten the moral purity of the Master Race.

Gays suffered under the Nazis, to be sure, but with an overall mortality of less than 1% they were not among the first ranks of the victims.

http://www.holocaust-trc.org/homosx.htm

"For me, the only compelling reason to stay out of Darfur is the (plausible) argument that intervention won't work, or that it will cost the American public more than we can pay."

How about that it's against the Constitution, since the Constitution does not allow the military to be used unless it provides for the "common defence"?

The choice is: war or genocide? Those who avoid the term "genocide" merely want to pretend the choice away.

Bush should have been noting Darfur, and the estimated deaths, every month since he first called it genocide. See my Fantasy Speech of a couple years ago -- the blame for continued genocide is:
1) Sudan, irresponsible gov't not stopping it,
2) UN, calling it "not genocide", so that Sudan passes the Dem "global test",
3) Amnesty & Human Rights Watch, for not calling it genocide, and NOT calling for war to stop it;
4) The news media for not reporting it.

Any news media that, in 2005, had more 2003 Abu Ghraib pictures and news stories than Darfur, is contributing to the deaths.

Bush should offer to put Ted Kennedy in charge of stopping Darfur -- and blame the Dems for not asking for a declaration of war to enforce the anti-genocide treaty obligations.

Best would be to create an international Human Rights Enforcement Group.

But Yglesias' questions are also genuine:
create an independent Darfur? Probably; like S. Sudan, with a future referendum; and the interim independent govt.
Controlled by whom? by black rebel tribal leaders, with tribal cantons, some law & peace enforcement by Coalition troops.
Big picture of American foreign policy. How would attacking another Arab country affect America's larger security concerns? Makes the non-democracies more respectful; they can't hate much more, but they can liberalize faster and stop oppression faster.

Would circumventing the UN merely provoke protests from China and like-minded human rights averse dictators, or will developing world democracies like India, South Africa, and Brazil see it as imperialism run amok? India is key here -- the US should strongly get India on board with Human Rights Enforcement, and Indian peacekeepers, perhaps trained and equiped by the US.

Is war with Sudan an efficient humanitarian measure when we could be curing measles without great controversy? Curing measles is a current pipedream, like feeding the world, because of bad gov't obstacles.

War is more efficient than slo-mo genocide, which is what the anti-war folk implicitly support.
War or genocide, those are the two options.

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