[PEN-L:7631] Re: Re: Bwana Compares Mao to Hitler

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:07 AM 6/3/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
>>>> "Michael Keaney" <M.Keaney@xxxxxxxxxx> 06/03/99 06:17AM >>>
>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>> Stalin did not launch a war as Hitler did.
>
>No he did not, although his annexations of the Baltic states bear some
>comparison with the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with
>Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland. Stalin also launched an
>attack against Finland, which had the happy effect of exposing how
>ill-prepared the Soviet military was for war, among many unhappy effects.
>There is also the matter of the massacre at Katyn, committed during the
>joint Soviet-Nazi carve-up of Poland. Then there are the assorted pogroms,
>purges and cleansings of kulaks, Jews, Left Opposition, Right Opposition,
>any opposition (real or imaginary).
>
>(((((((((((((
>
>Charles: Without ignoring that some of these specific actions have another
side to the story, they amount to much less than the imperialist wars of
aggression launched by pretty much all American presidents. Even
domestically ,Washington put down Shays rebellion. Andrew Jackson led mass
murder of indigenous peoples usurping their homeland from them in the
American southeast.  Mexico was invaded by the U.S. in the early 1800's.
The history of U.S. presidents in the twentieth century in Dominican
Republic, Nicaragua (80's and 20's), Viet Nam, Panama, as a very small
sample ( see list that has been circulating in response to the current war
on Yugoslavia and Iraq for a more complete picture of the massive U.S.
aggression through history) . With two bombs, Truman killed tens of
thousands in minutes.
>
>The parade of U.S. president imperalist war horribles is mind boggling and
evidence of murderous tyranny equalling and surpassing your description above.


--snip


That further confirms my long held suspicion that the US is basically a
USSR without S(ocial) R(esponsibility) but with much more money instead.

More seriously, because those two countries are comparable in that both
were established largely though colonisation of indigenous peoples (equally
brutal, I may add) and both used universalisitc ideologies to legitimate
their hegemonic positions (for example, the Russian tsar abolished serfdom
in Poland (then a part of Russia) in 1864 to undercut peasant support to a
nationalistic uprising in almost exact same fashion as Lincoln abolished
slavery to undercut the Southern rebellion).

I think a more constructive discussion would be a comparison of these two
states to learn something about imperialism, instead trying to exonerate
one by pointing out the misdeeds of the other.

wojtek