Much of my family has a critical case of BDS - a condition which has led to many disputes over the President's course in the Middle East.

Imagine the chagrin when, during an argument about the terrible toll we have taken on the civilians in Iraq, I pointed out that our beloved Grandfather had killed more civilians while piloting a B-29 out of Guam during WWII than the whole U.S. military killed in Iraq. Grandma (bless her heart) backed me up.

Heck, we lost more than half the number of guys we've lost in this war just when the Indianapolis went down, delivering atomic bomb parts to Tinian so we could nuke Japan.

Half-a-million bombs?

Nonsense.

Half-a-million pounds of explosive, maybe... are there no editors? Does nobody think about what they're writing?

"It's delightfully absurd when folks who justly celebrate our victory over Japan and the totalitarian means by which we re-engineered its society turn around and decry the brutality and slavery practiced by our ancestors."

When precisely did Sub-Saharan Africans engage in a sneak attack against a major American defense facility prior to the beginnings of slavery?

I will grant that the history of our intercourse with Native Americans is far more complex than either the old oaters or the revisionist nitwits today would have us believe.

"You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting"

Are we supposed to be shocked by this simple truism? One of the more annoying things about those who are "anti-war" is their belief that anyone who supports a war must either love killing and maiming or are too ignorant to know that those things will be happening.

Bart:

that's chattel slavery, not slavery.

What is the difference? And why should it matter?

Because classic slavery was just a way of integrating inferior cultures into superior--it was a benign and beneficial institution, obviously superior to just slaughtering the foe, via firebombing or whatever. The post-war occupations can best be viewed as brief periods of a modern spin on classic slavery.

Chattel slavery proceeds from the assumption of permanently inferior racial/ethnic groups who can be treated as property.

Awfully fine line between the two, seems to me. Plenty of defenders of the antebellum South (then and now) argued that they fell on the classical, rather than chattel, side of the line. Ditto defenders of various European empires' treatment of the natives in the Americas, Africa and Asia. It's hard to tell how much of that is self-delusion and hard to make valid generalizations.

Why?

I knew we were being too nice in Iraq.

Mike Earl: the figure for bombs could well be correct. Most WWII incendiary bombs were smaller than standard high explosive bombs, and some were early cluster bombs that broke open when dropped and carried 80 bomblets:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~ny330bg/aircraft.htm

You chose the phrase, '...slavery practiced by our ancestors'. Paraphrasing Tonto in the old joke, what do you mean 'our ancestors', paleface? Where was this slavery practiced? Give me an example of America engaging in this form of non-chattel slavery.

OJ's worst post ever.

Bart:

Classic slavery was done in the West by the time of the New World, except in Islam. Here we went with genocide instead. It worked too, but was hardly morally superior.

OJ,

That is all too facile. What happened in the West is quite fascinating and the more I read the less confident I feel about making any generalizations.(BTW, if I ever win the lottery I'm going to establish a Museum of Judaica in the American West, it's an utterly fascinating topic and a template for understanding Jewish history elsewhere.)

When we moved West, we were able to exploit internecine battles among Native Americans to our advantage. Prior to the Westward Migration, the Sioux and their relatives, the Northern Cheyenne, had been engaged in a genocidal assault against all their neighbors, not unlike the Hutu, for the previous 150 years. Thus, it was easy to find allies and 'divide and conquer.' While we moved the Native Americans to places that served our purposes, it is difficult to call that 'genocide' in the same way that the Jews of Europe or the Hutus and Tutsis killed each other or even the behavior of the British in Scotland after the '45. There was plenty of criminality by Whites, including Bruce Babbitt's family, and there was no consideration given to the needs of the tribes, but it was far from genocide.

So, I hope you'll retract your reference to slavery in your initial post then, as it is of no relevance to the American experience.

Bart:

Who said we practiced classic slavery?

We were genocidal.

People complain that Judeo-Christianity did not condemn classic slavery, but they don't grasp the institution nor do they consider our own parallel practices.

OJ:

Small error: The Indianapolis had already delivered the Hiroshima material to Tinian and was actually headed for Leyte when it sunk (I know this because I wrote a report on the Indy a few years ago).

Otherwise, your point is excellent: We lost 880 men in that one event and the whole scale of losses makes our current situation, after two years of fighting, seem almost utopian.

You're the guy who brought the term 'slavery' into the discussion. You specifically state that it was 'practiced by our ancestors.' Then, you go into this absurdly Talmudic series of verbal gymnastics over the differences between 'chattel slavery' and 'classic slavery'(Can Slavery 2, Vanilla Slavery, and Caffeine Free Diet Slavery be far behind?). When I challenged you on your implication that slavery was justified and positive by referencing our treatment of West Africans, you claimed that this was chattel slavery which was immoral, not classic slavery. Fine. Then, I asked when we ever engaged in classic slavery. You stated that we did not do so in the New World.

Thus, I am forced to ask again, when you use the phrase 'slavery practiced by our ancestors,' what do you me 'our ancestors', paleface? If you are referring the various and sundry conquests in Europe, I think I would be remiss not to remind you that most Americans are the descendants of the slaves and not the slavers, the serfs and not the lords, the peasants and not the nobles.

bart:

Are you under the impression that your first ancestor was created in a lab at Ellis Island?

oj,

Not at all. I could claim that my ancestors received the butt end of treatment from Christian Europe for the better part of 1700 years, which should more than absolve me of any liability for any crimes committed either by Biblical Hebrews or Central Asian Khazarim.

The point is you made some reference to slavery that turns out to be bogus and you refuse to acknowledge that fact. America did not engage in 'classical slavery' so Americans should not be described as having ancestors who 'practiced slavery.' What Europeans did in Europe doesn't matter in the discussion, any more than the various dynastic conflicts of Imperial China.

What liability?

All I said was that the slavery they practiced was consistent with moral principles. Indeed, it was more as humand and or more humane than our own practices with regard to enemy peoples.

Your notion that ancestorship stops at some point is simply bizarre.