Dear Rudi,

(You spelled my name with an "i", so I'll return the favor.)

I do not believe the court historians. History is written by the victors. If the devil-Nazis had won the war, they would have recorded a completely conflicting account of events. My mom lived in German-occupied Northern Italy during the Good War. She tells me of kindly German soldiers; she likewise tells me of dodging not-so-kindly American bombs. You could say (of course you won't) she's a Holocaust survivor. The fact remains I wouldn't have been born if she had been "damaged collaterally."

FDR had foreknowledge of the Japanese "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor; he let it happen to suck the U.S. into his stupid war. More French died from the Allied bombing of France than did English from the Nazi bombing of Coventry. Churchill bombed Germany before Hitler bombed Coventry. All this history is studiously ignored.

You say there are no humanitarian bombings. Yet you accept the nuking of Hiroshima. What does terrorism mean if not the intentional killing of innocent and unarmed civilians? Don't the denizens of Hiroshima qualify? You want to go back to "Nanking, Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and, yes, Coventry." Go back to your heart's content. The denizens of Dresden (which included many of Stalin's refugees, but nobody cares about that, because the mass-murdering "Uncle Joe" was on the "good guys'" side) and Hiroshima and Cologne and Hamburg and Tokyo and Nagasaki had nothing to do with the atrocities committed in "Nanking, Guernica," etc.

I will close with a quote from Nicholson Baker, the author of Human Smoke: the Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (a new release--you may want to check it out):

"I've had some very good reviews and some very bad ones. The bad ones seem to follow the teeter-totter school: that if a dictator and the nation he controls is evil, then the leader of the nation who opposes the evil dictator must be good. Life isn't that way, of course. There is in fact no "moral equivalence" created by examining coterminous violent and repulsive acts. The notion of moral equivalence is a mistake, because it undermines our notions of personal responsibility and law. Each act of killing is its own act, not something to be heaped like produce on a balancing scale. One person, as Roosevelt said, must not be punished for the deed of another--though he didn't follow his own precept."

I have no use for the "teeter-totter school." I have no use for group-think. I am concerned only with the Holocaust of One. There are no uniquely monstrous people or pure-as-the-driven-snow people. There are only people.

Tony

Sent: Sat, 3 May 2008 5:41 pm
Subject: Re: Let's Koventrier Teutonophobia

Dear Toni,

For a moment, I checked to see if the sender of your email might have been the Reverend Wright.

When it comes to the WWII conflict, we might have to go back to Nanking, Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and yes, Coventry before retaliation rained on Germany and Japan.

Duringthe "funny war" French and English bombers were instructed to untie the bundles of leaflets being dropped on Germany "for fear of injuring civilians"

I guess you never saw the German propaganda newsreels and magazines (e.g. Signal) where German crews were shown delighting in dropping bombloads on German cities.

After that, anything went. "Who sowns the wind will reap the tempest".

I have become reconcilled with Hiroshima, but I still have very strong reservations about Nagasaki. I often feel that it was dropped in a hurry to be able to compare results from two different bomb designs.

As far as Teutonophobia ( I love the word) my credentials as a Holocaust Survivor might give me an edge, although I do not blame the sons for the sins of the fathers. I do remember being at JFK airport waiting in line for a long time because two Germans were loudly assailing an airline clerk. My wife mentioned to me that the "Boches" were holding up the line.
Another clerk admonished us that it was not nice to say "Boches". I suggested that since both my wife and I had endured many harms during the nearly 5 years of the German occupation of Belgium, we had earned the right to use the term "Boche" whenever we felt the need to.

I do agree with you that there are NO humanitarian bombings.

In friendship.

Rudy

Good old Winston! Good old Franklin! They Koventriered Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfort and Cologne, incinerating not only innocent German civilians (a half dozen or so of whom surely existed) but the tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans seeking refuge from Winston and Franklin's beloved ally, the mass-murdering Uncle Joe Stalin. Their acts of benevolence culminated, of course, in good old Harry's nuclear Koventriering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus ended the Good War.

Every year, around August 6 and 9, America-hating malcontents brazenly question the morality of Harry's atomic bombing of Japan (but certainly not Winston and Franklin's firebombing of Germany!). I can still hear the roars of disapproval from the gathered crowds.

Unlike the hand-wringing, head-in-the-clouds Blame America First crowd, the enlightened multitude grasps the illegitimacy of moral equivalence. The German and Japanese bombing of Coventry and Pearl Harbor are rightly viewed as homicidal bombing. Likewise the 9/11 attacks and the suicide bombing practiced by Muslim extremists. But when the Apostles of Democracy deign to uplift barbarian societies by raining death from the skies, well, that's what we call humanitarian bombing.

In the immortal words of Vonnegut, "And so it goes."

Tony Pivetta
Royal Oak, Michigan

From: Rudy
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--extirpate

Good old Adolf! After the German bombers completely eradicated Coventry, UK, Hitler coined a new word for "extirpate" -- Koventrier: To Coventry. He thenbroadcast to the English people that Germany would erase all their cities. I can still hear the roars of approval from the gathered crowds.