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From: wkp@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Charley Wingate's race hatred (con't)
Message-ID: <25249@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 1-May-85 01:08:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.25249
Posted: Wed May  1 01:08:24 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 2-May-85 06:42:56 EDT
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Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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In article <5223@fortune.UUCP> brower@fortune (Richard Brower) writes:

>Now hold on a second, here.  Should we take American soldiers who died
>fighting American Indians out of our National Cemeteries because it was
>genocide they were performing?

     On the other hand, should we ask American Indians to come and lay
     wreaths on the killers of their ancestors?

>It may have been a job that should not have been done, but there are laws
>and rules that soldiers must follow.  And they deserve honor.

     The question is:  honor from whom?  From the descendants of the
     murdered?  Then why doesn't Reagan go to Japan and lay a wreath on the
     graves of those Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor?

     How about getting the Armenians to lay wreaths on the graves of
     Turkish soldiers?  In what way do we honor modern Germany by honoring
     the butchers of Oradour-sur-Glane?  (The French are really pleased
     about that, I'm sure!)

>Many people, including you apparently, seem to
>want to blame the whole German people for the actions of WWII, but this
>is just as wrong as the actions you comdemn.  German soldiers, not involved
>in the death camps, deserve honor for being good soldiers just as dead
>American soldiers do.  Not everybody can be a resistance hero.

    Please don't put words in my mouth.  It's really unfair.  I do not
    condemn the entire German people for the actions of the Nazis.  All
    I ask is that another way be found to show our friendship with the
    German people.  Like honoring the dead of Dresden, or Bonhoeffer, or
    German civilians killed by American troops.

    Why does the German government insist we show our friendship by
    honoring the graves of mass murderers?  Must 40-year-old Jewish
    graves be desecrated in order to rehabilitate Helmut Schmidt?
--
bill peter                          ihnp4!lanl!wkp