Atrocities 

1509-1890 Europeans and Americans kill 30 million Native Americans (95-98% killed)

1700-1860 United States enslaves over two million Africans

1880-1920 Belgian rule leads to an estimated 10 million African deaths in the Congo.

1898-1910 Philippine-American war results in 600,000 Filipinos deaths 

Stalin and Mao

1904-1907 German rule kills 75,000 Southwest Africans

1896-1923 Ottoman Empire/Turkey effectively kills 2 million Armenians

1937     Japan kills an estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians, rapes 20,000.

1941-1945 Germany kills about 5 million Jews, and about 5 million gypsies, dissidents, homosexuals, handicapped, and POWs.

1942-1944 Germany bombs London, killing 50,000 civilians

1945     U.S. and U.K. bomb Dresden, killing 35,000 to 150,000 civilians

1945    United States drops two nuclear bombs, killing 150,000 Japanese civilians

1965    Indonesian Army kills hundreds of thousands of people, mostly peasants

1975-1979 Khmer Rouge kill 1 to 3 million Cambodians civilians

1983 Sudan kills 2 million civilians in the south in civil war

1994 Rwanda military and militia kill 800,000 Tutsis tribe members

1991-2003 Sanctions against Iraq result in 1 million deaths, mostly children

This is only a partial list of the human atrocities committed (I didn’t list anything under 50,000 civilians killed because the list would be far too long.). Even though every one of these atrocities is terrible, only the holocaust is constantly being brought up for public attention and acknowledgement. Even Jews recognize that this is being done for political advantage. I would like to point out that it is wrong to use any tragic event for political gain, yet political groups and politicians jump at the opportunity. The two groups in the U.S. that certainly deserve sympathy and reparations are the Native Americans and African-American descendants of slaves. Instead, the U.S. seems to be continuing their imperialistic goals by invading Iraq to take control of their oil (ironically, the U.S. controls Native American oil), and to economically enslave people in other countries ($0.25/hr in Zambia, $0.44/hr in Brazil, $0.50/hr in China).

9/11 was not listed, but it is also being used for political reasons, especially since the whole story is not being revealed (see 9/11). It seems ironic that those who were the most instrumental in causing this tragic event are the ones who are using it for political gain.

The common factors that allow normal individuals to commit acts of genocide were when one group viewed itself as superior to another, and the other group was viewed as less than human, like parasites. Is it any wonder that the military frequently commits atrocities when these factors are a standard part of military training? Isn’t it of any interest that Bush is trying to exempt the U.S. (and himself) from being accused of war crimes? Isn’t it of any interest that if Bush were successful, any impediment to committing greater atrocities (like nuclear attacks) would be removed?