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From: david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: The Shame of the President
Message-ID: <587@fisher.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 10:21:17 EST
Article-I.D.: fisher.587
Posted: Wed Apr 24 10:21:17 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Apr-85 03:59:28 EST
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> > 
> > "I think there is nothing wrong with visiting
> > that cemetery where those young men are victims
> > of Nazism also, even though they were fighting
> > in the German uniform. They were victims just as surely
> > as the victims in the concentration camps."
> >           -President Reagan, NYTimes 4/19/85
 
> I'll buy Reagan's reasoning, but would not comment
> on merits of his trip schedule. 
> When at age 16 you are drafted by the Nazi Germany army
> and sent to be shredded - you are in sad shape.
> Germans who were 16 in 1944 have been submitted to
> overwhelming Nazi propaganda since age of 5.
> Even if you are intelligent enough at 16 to suspect,
> are you determined enough to oppose the regime?
> 
> Of, course, the above applies to rather limited number of
> people.
> 
>    				Mike Cherepov

Yes, conscripts can be considered victims, much as someone who dies as
the result of a mugging or a disease is a victim.  However, there is a
difference in levels of victimization.  What is objectionable is that
Reagan believes someone who dies in a war serving his country is as
much as victim as the object of genocide.  It is the equating of a
war with genocide to which I strenuously object, for if war is
inevitable (and even sometimes justified), must not someone who believes
genocide to be morally equivalent also accept the latter as inevitable?

Also, their is a distinction worth making between the state of mind of
a teenager drafted into the Wehrmacht and a volunteer "serving" in the
SS.  By visiting Bitburg, Reagan fails to make that distinction.  Thus
he compounds the insult by not only equating lesser victims with
greater victims, but by also treating the victimizers as victims, too.

					David Rubin
			{allegra|astrovax|princeton}!fisher!david