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From: cja@lzwi.UUCP (C.E.JACKSON)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Bitburg - my 2 cents worth
Message-ID: <132@lzwi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-May-85 16:57:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: lzwi.132
Posted: Fri May 10 16:57:17 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 11-May-85 04:04:49 EDT
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> I think Reagan was correct in saying that his cemetary visit was 
> "morally right".  For once he had (at least half of) a good idea - it's
> time it was recognized that everyone involved paid a terrible price in
> World War II (except Stalin, who got Eastern Europe out of it, not to mention
> subjects more willing than ever to forgo freedom for the sake of
> security, - but that's another story).  alice!jj is right in saying we
> should forgive without forgetting, and I share his (her?) amazement at
> the number of people who don't comprehend how one can do one without the 
> other.
I can understand how people can forgive without forgetting,
but I don't think that has been what the people who support
the Bitburg trip (starting with Reagan) have been doing.

First, people didn't start really objecting to the Bitburg
trip until it was pointed out that SS soldiers were buried
there--that is, there wasn't widespread disgust with the idea
of honoring regular German soldiers. The comments of many
people on the net indicate that they've "forgotten" that
little detail. They assume that everyone who's against the
trip somehow wants revenge on every German soldier.

Reagan also seems to have forgotten this little fact.
He forgot, too, that the SS was populated by people who
endorsed Nazism and that no one was drafted into the SS.
People forget that one of the anti-Semitic attitudes that
Nazism fostered was that Jewish people had an inordinate
control over the press. And people are now saying that it's
"undue Jewish influence" that has caused so much uproar over
Bitburg.
And one man on the net even seems to have "forgotten" that Germany 
started war because he was talking about how we shouldn't blame people
for joining the Germany army since it was understandable for
people to join armies "when the tanks are in the streets."
The tanks were rumbling *out* for most of the war, not rumbling
*in.*
> 
I agree with your proposed travel plans, up to this:
> 
> Visit a German military ceremony, recognizing the common men (and boys) forced
> onto the battlefield by the Nazis.

Here I would add the criterion that the cemetery NOT have SS
people buried in it.
> Mike Ryan

C. E. Jackson
...ihnp4!lznv!cja (for reasons too silly to explain,the address above 
[lzwi] is incorrect--don't use it)