Making a nation democratic (was: Why Do They Hate Us?)

[Kelley]

At 04:01 PM 10/31/01 +0000, Russell Turpin wrote:
>Gary Murphy writes:
>>And pardon my playing the race card, but would we be as ready to bomb 
>>them if their civilian "hostages" were white middle class Europeans ..
>
>There is a one word answer to this.
>
>Dresden.
>
>Russell


I think if you ask Germans, they'll tell you about how, when they came here 
during the waves of immigration, they were frequently called names. I think 
a speech by FDR actually made fun of their wooden shoes and their backward 
way of life. There was a PBS special last fall that focused on the history 
of Germans in the US.  Also, it was toward the end of the war and we'd 
thoroughly dehumanized the 'krauts' by then. There was a more important, 
overriding reason for Dresden and Hamburg. The civilians who died like 
"fried eels on the pavement" were sacrificed toward the end of showing the 
Soviet Union what we were capable of.

kelley