ryan@fremen.DEC (Mike Ryan DTN 264-8280 MK01-2/H32) (05/07/85)
Maybe I'm a little late getting into this discussion, but what the hell? I can't believe I'm actually going to support Reagan (to a point), the first time his Teflon has started to show a few scratches. I guess I just like underdogs (being a lifetime Red Sox/Patriots fan, of course). Worse yet, I'm even going to agree with alice!jj! 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. Unfortunately, Reagan didn't take it far enough. What Reagan should have done was: Visit a concentration camp to honor the millions of people maliciously tortured, experimented on, and slaughtered. Visit a cemetary where members of the German Resistance and Allied war dead were buried, honoring their struggle to end the evil. Visit Dresden, to recognize the civilians who paid with their lives for Hitler's thirst for world domination. Visit a German military ceremony, recognizing the common men (and boys) forced onto the battlefield by the Nazis. If Reagan's itinerary had included all of the above from the beginning, I don't see what objections could have been raised. Mike Ryan decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-fremen!ryan
cja@lzwi.UUCP (C.E.JACKSON) (05/10/85)
> 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)
garys@bunkerb.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson) (05/14/85)
> > Visit a German military ceremony, recognizing the common men > > (and boys) forced onto the battlefield by the Nazis. > > Mike Ryan > Here I would add the criterion that the cemetery NOT have SS > people buried in it. > C. E. Jackson So we should refuse to honor *any* of the people buried in a cemetary because we object to *some* of them? Suppose that *every* cemetary has a mixture of honorable and not honorable dead? Gary Samuelson
tos@psc70.UUCP (Dr.Schlesinger) (05/28/85)
It seems to have been overlooked that it isn't a matter of who "we" honor. Rather it's the enormous symbolism attached to the one-time state visit of the President of the United States... and especially the one who is Mr. Symbolisms himself! Thus the matter of whether there happen to be a "few" (47) SS-men being "blessed" by his gesture with a wreath on behalf of all of us, isn't as trivial as the phrase "who we honor..." makes it sound.