Everything I have posted on the website

[Justin A.]

Notes, Journals, Drafts
Genocide is much discussed and poorly understood. It is regularly
decried, yet little is done to prevent it. It is seen to be one of the
most intractable of modern phenomena, a periodic cataclysm that erupts
seemingly out of nowhere, often in distant places--Indonesia,
Guatemala, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur--where ethnic conflict or
hatred is said to have spun out of control. So we can do little about
it. Bill Clinton said as much while Serbs were slaughtering Bosnians:
"Until these folks get tired of killing each other, bad things will
continue to happen."
Perhaps we fail to prevent genocides not because they can't be
stopped, and not just because we lack the will to stop them, but
because we have misunderstood their nature. Perhaps if we understood
genocide properly, a feasible path to stopping this scourge of
humanity would become apparent. It may seem bold to say that we have
not understood genocide. But, after studying the subject for decades,
that is the conclusion I have reached. Genocides are so horrifying, so
seemingly in defiance of the ordinary rhythms of social life, so
threatening to what we believe we know about ourselves and the world--
so out of this world--that we don't think clearly about them. We need
to start over and rethink their every aspect: What they are. How they
begin. How and why they end. Why they unfold as they do. Why victims
are chosen. Why the killers kill. And, most of all, what we can do to
stop them.
Even something as fundamental as the real extent of the problem is
unknown. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, mass murderers
have killed more, perhaps many more, than 100 million people--a much
greater number than have died as a consequence of conventional
military operations. So genocide is, by this fundamental measure,
worse than war. Furthermore, people tend to think of our era's mass
slaughters--of Armenians, Jews, Kurds, Bosnians, Tutsis, Kosovars, and
Darfuris (not to mention recent history's long list of less-well-known
mass murders)--as discrete, unusual events. This is wrong: Large-scale
mass murder is a systemic feature of modern states and the
international system, and that is how we should begin to treat it.

The foundational problem, in fact, is not even genocide. Genocide,
however we define it, is but one expression of a broader and more
fundamental phenomenon: eliminationism.
Political and social conflicts among groups exist in all human
societies. In many societies, groups come to be seen as deleterious to
the well-being of the majority or, sometimes, a powerful minority. How
this happens and the character of the pernicious qualities projected
onto such groups vary enormously. When it does, people can deem the
perniciousness of such populaces to be so great that they want to
neutralize them by eliminating the group or by destroying its capacity
to inflict putative harm. So they employ any of the five principal
means of elimination: forced transformation, repression, expulsion,
prevention of reproduction, or extermination. But, whatever means they
choose, the desire and the attempt to eliminate peoples or groups
should be understood as the core problem.
Precisely because these eliminationist means are functional
equivalents, perpetrators typically use several of them
simultaneously. The Turks did so for the Armenians. The Germans did so
for the Jews. The Sudanese have done so for their victims, and so did
the Serbs. Alisa Muratčauš, former president of the Association of
Concentration Camp Torture Survivors in Sarajevo, explains that the
Serbs "aimed to eliminate all Bosnian people." Yet they used a variety
of means: "Some people will be expelled to another country, a Western
country. Some people would be killed. Some people will be [kept] alive
for maybe [the Serbs'] personal needs. Who knows? Maybe like slavery."
Whenever we see these large-scale violent assaults, such as expulsions
or incarcerations mixed together with killing, we should immediately
recognize them as being eliminationist assaults (which could also
expand into much larger-scale killing) and respond to them with all
the vigor that we ought to apply to genocides. And we should certainly
not sit on our hands with pointless debates about definitions--does it
qualify as genocide?--as we have done with the former Yugoslavia and
Darfur. We should realize that the non-lethal aspects of
eliminationist assaults are as critical to combat as the killing
itself. Appreciating this helps to make clear that the problem we are
confronting is even more vast and more urgent. Genocide and
eliminationism should no longer receive the third-rate treatment that
they currently do from our politicians: They should be at the core of
present and future international policy-making.


Beyond appreciating its breadth, there are two other crucial facts we
need to recognize about eliminationism. First, it is a form of
politics. Like war, eliminationism is the extension of politics by
other means. Political leaders use eliminationist measures to maintain
or further power, socially and politically transform a country, defuse
a real or putative threat, purify a society according to some
ideological blueprint, or achieve any of many other aspirations. Mass
murder and elimination are thus politics not in a superficial sense,
but at their core, because they are purposeful, calculated acts of
leaders meant to achieve political goals. They are an integral part of
the repertoire of political leaders, always in principle available,
and, in our time, frequently used. It is precisely because
eliminationism is such a successful form of politics--those employing
it almost always effectively carry out the eliminationist task--that
political leaders have adopted it so often during the last century and
this one.
Second, even though eliminationism may be grounded in widespread
beliefs among groups about the pernicious nature of other people, such
hatreds or prejudices are not what unleash eliminationist assaults.
Eliminationist assaults are not spontaneous popular outbursts. Like
other major state policies requiring large institutional mobilization
and regional or nationwide coordination, eliminationism is initiated
by one political leader or a small group of leaders, who at a specific
moment make a discrete decision to expel, kill, or otherwise eliminate
the targeted people.
Idi Amin initiated the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Uganda.
Presidents Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia and José Efraín Ríos Montt were
responsible for the mass murder in Guatemala of Mayans under the guise
of counterinsurgency. Mengistu Haile Mariam masterminded and initiated
the various Ethiopian eliminationist programs. Pol Pot and the Khmer
Rouge leaders around him instituted the murderous policies that took
almost two million Cambodian lives. The Argentinean junta's members
started the "dirty war" against their real and imagined enemies.
Augusto Pinochet authorized the slaughter of thousands in Chile. Hafez
Al Assad gave the order to indiscriminately murder people in Hama.
Saddam Hussein orchestrated the annihilation of hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis. Slobodan Milošević enacted one Serbian eliminationist
onslaught after the next. Théoneste Bagosora, the Rwandan Ministry of
Defense's director of services, and a small circle of associates set
in motion the comprehensive assault on the Tutsis. Omar Al Bashir and
the other political Islamists who run Sudan initiated the mass murder
of Darfuris. In none of these cases was the eliminationist assault
inevitable. These decision-makers could have decided otherwise. They
could have spared innumerable lives.
So why did they decide to do it? Even the most monstrous leaders have
also been pragmatic and purposeful politicians. All sought power and
all made every effort to keep it. Even when political leaders are--
like their followers, who willingly implement their policies--animated
by hatred, even when they dehumanize the targeted people, they are
still politicians, which means they are still interested in power.
They will pursue eliminationist policies only if they believe these
policies will succeed at enhancing their own power or furthering
cherished goals--that is, only if they believe the benefits to
themselves will outweigh the costs. And, more often than not, from
Indonesia to Ethiopia to Guatemala to Iraq to Sudan, that is exactly
what eliminationist policies have done. This explains why rationally
calculating political leaders use such policies so often.

Recognizing that eliminationism--not only its most murderous variant,
genocide--is a widespread problem, and that it is a form of politics,
and that it is pursued by leaders who believe (almost always
correctly) that it will benefit them, how can we respond politically?
Can we remove eliminationism from the standard repertoire of policy?
In other words, can we save millions of lives?
Past efforts have accomplished little. The 60-year-old U.N. Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has proven
itself almost useless, and the United Nations, as the international
community's lead institution, has been a foot-dragging disaster, doing
more to enable eliminationist leaders than to stop them. Special
tribunals and the International Criminal Court (ICC), all necessary
and good, have been too late, too slow, and too partial to be
effective--the ICC took more than five years from the start of the
Darfur genocide just to issue an unenforceable arrest warrant for Al
Bashir! Serious diplomatic efforts have been meager. The occasional
military response has been years late. The Responsibility to Protect
movement, while promising, remains slow-moving. All in all, the
current anti-genocide regime is ad hoc and toothless. In fact, it
would be fair to say that, as a practical matter, it doesn't exist.
And eliminationism more generally--which can include the expulsion of
a vast number of people from their homes--is barely on the
international community's radar, meaning that, unless an assault is
seen to fit the restricted definition of genocide, it is unlikely that
the international community will respond forcefully.
A robust anti-eliminationist system would contain three substantial
and interrelated components: prevention, intervention, and punishment.
Currently, there is no prevention regime, only infrequent attempts at
intervention, and rarely any punishment. All three parts of such a
system need to be thought through, but preventing eliminationist
assaults, more than intervening to end them or punishing the
perpetrators after the fact, should be our initial focus.
Prevention works in two ways. First, changing the mindset of leaders
and creating conditions that make eliminationism utterly unworkable
removes it from the toolkit of political leaders so that pursuing such
politics does not even occur to them. Democratic institutions do this
effectively. Mass murder and elimination have ever more become
domestic rather than international matters. And not only do today's
democracies not practice such domestic politics, but, it is fair to
say, eliminationism is not even a consideration for their leaders. A
world of democracies would be a world without mass murder, or, at
worst, with an enormously reduced incidence of it. Eliminationism
today is the practice of dictatorships, and today's dictatorships
should all be considered proto-eliminationist regimes. Even when their
leaders and dominant groups are not undertaking eliminationist
assaults, precisely because they are always at least implicitly
threatened by the groups and people they are repressing, they are at
any moment not that far away from ramping up their repressive measures
to eliminationist levels of violence.
Second, and far more immediately effective and doable, is radically
altering the cost-benefit calculus of political leaders and the
immediate subordinates upon whom they rely, to make the price of
eliminationist politics so costly that leaders will not opt for it. A
critical feature of international politics is generally
underestimated: the capacity of political leaders to learn. In today's
globalized world, knowledge of what is possible or impossible,
permissible or impermissible is rapidly disseminated and absorbed.
Until now political leaders have learned that the politics of
eliminationism is a politics of impunity. We could teach them and the
world the opposite. If we did, we could rapidly end or greatly reduce
the threat posed by eliminationism.
Let's look at two possible measures for raising the price of
eliminationism. If leaders knew that initiating eliminationist
assaults would turn them into permanent outlaws--that is, the legal
doctrine of Hostis Humani Generis (enemies of humanity), until now
applied to pirates, would apply to them for the rest of their lives--
and, if they understood that they would be relentlessly hunted until
they were brought to justice, their cost-benefit calculations would
radically change. If not just leaders but all their high-ranking
civilian and military subordinates were similarly declared
international outlaws (by dint of serving in institutions that,
according to international law, can clearly be deemed criminal
organizations) and subject to the same penalties as the political
leaders, those leaders would calculate their chances of enlisting
their subordinates, and relying on their cooperation, very
differently.


Of course, as the ICC has shown, indicting an eliminationist leader is
easier than bringing him to justice. But what if the democratic
countries of the world were to adopt a modified version of the United
States's Rewards for Justice program--which has led to the capture and
killing of major terrorists and, when instituted after the fact,
Rwandan genocidaires--guaranteeing that any eliminationist assault
would immediately trigger million-dollar bounties being placed on the
heads of political and military leaders and their high-ranking
subordinates? Then the critical conditions of deterrence would be met:
A powerful disincentive would be in place, accompanied by a reasonable
certitude on the part of anyone contemplating the deed that the
disincentive will be applied to him. No political leader, wanting the
good life, would want to be wanted dead or alive. Which dictator in a
poor country could even be sure his own bodyguards would not turn on
him? The Obama administration, like earlier Democratic and Republican
administrations, offers such bounties for terrorists who kill a few
dozen or a few thousand people. How can we justify not doing the same
when the lives of millions are at stake?
I asked Rwandan Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama--who has
steeped himself in the problem of genocide and knows more about it
than just about any other public figure in the world--whether a
guarantee that anyone initiating genocide would be hunted down would
have prevented the Rwandan genocide and would be effective in
preventing future mass slaughters. "Definitely, definitely,
definitely, definitely, many times definitely," he replied, then
explained: "If people knew that at the end of the day they'll be the
losers, they'd never invest in a losing enterprise. Because genocide,
as you correctly pointed out, is a political enterprise, it's a
political game. But again, it's a power play, it's wealth, it's
everything. So, if people involved knew at the end of the day they'd
be the losers, they would not play the game. That's for sure."
There are other deterrents available as well. Most dictators rely on
their militaries to stay in power. If dictators understood that their
eliminationist policies would trigger the destruction of their
country's military capability, then this also would be a powerful
disincentive. Under such a policy, political leaders would quickly
learn: If they choose to initiate an eliminationist assault, the
world's democracies, led by the United States, would bomb their
military bases and forces (steadfastly avoiding population centers and
civilian infrastructure). How many dictators would begin an
eliminationist assault if they were facing such consequences? Bombing
by nato in 1995 quickly forced Milošević to stop the eliminationist
assault on Bosnians. If it had been done three years earlier, when the
onslaught began, many tens of thousands of people would not have lost
their lives, and hundreds of thousands more would not have been
expelled from their homes, raped, or brutalized.
To buttress the deterrent force of such threats, these and other
political, diplomatic, and military measures should be communicated to
all world leaders and their high-level subordinates by every available
means the moment they assume office, democratically or not. Handbooks
should be distributed by every major international and regional
association (the U.N., NATO, the WTO, the African Union, etc.),
spelling out these and other anti-eliminationist measures. Every
political leader, cabinet member, and high-ranking military and police
official ought to be put on notice: Should you decide to participate
in eliminationist assaults or serve eliminationist regimes, this is
what awaits you.
Some may say these measures are too costly--referring to money, not
lives. But, compared to the cost of allowing mass elimination to take
place (or of forcibly inserting ground troops), these steps would
actually be relatively inexpensive. The United States alone spent
$1.35 billion in the first ten years for Bosnia's reconstruction, and
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has cost
more than $1.5 billion.
Others may object that such policies would lead to too much
intervention. But these policies are designed to provide effective
deterrence--and, if deterrence ever fails, then, with the first
intervention, to strengthen deterrence by demonstrating what will
happen to the next set of political leaders who initiate an
eliminationist assault. The danger in the world today is anything but
too much intervention to stop mass murderers. The real problem is
getting the world's democracies to intervene at all. So let's focus on
trying to get a robust anti-eliminationist system in place, rather
than worrying about the hypothetical and unlikely problem of too much
intervention-- or the practical need to perhaps make occasional
exceptions.
Still others may declare that these steps, costly or not, are too
radical. But, as with so much thinking about genocide, such vision is
clouded: The really radical stance consists of maintaining the status
quo, the do-nothingness that has governed international law and
politics as we all stand by and watch eliminationist regimes
slaughter, expel, and brutalize millions.

If in 1900 you had said that it would be possible to end imperialism,
few would have believed you. Imperialism, after all, had been a fact
of the human condition for millennia. Likewise if you had said that it
would be possible to stop war from being the principal means by which
a large percentage of the countries of the world relate to one
another. Yet each has occurred. The notion that we could end
eliminationism--a phenomenon that has existed as long as humanity--may
seem similarly fanciful today. But it is much less unrealistic than it
sounds.
Just as it only takes one or a few political leaders to decide to
slaughter or expel millions, so too can a few political leaders, a few
moral men and women, go a long way toward ending such practices.
(These relatively low-cost preventive measures--compared to after-the-
fact invasions--also have the virtue of being far more likely to get
them to act.) Let's not be content to utter pieties. Let's not wait
for the glacially moving international community--centered around the
United Nations--to evolve. The matter is urgent. Tens of thousands can
die and be brutalized every day. The leaders of a few democracies, or
even just the president of the United States, could institute bounties
and guarantee the application of force. This would open up a new anti-
eliminationist era.
So far, on these matters, Barack Obama has gone in precisely the wrong
direction. Instead of attempting to show that there are consequences
for eliminationist murdering and expulsions, his administration has
taken a soft line toward Al Bashir, one of the worst eliminationists
and mass murderers of our time. In doing so, the administration is
broadcasting a simple message around the globe, a message being heard
by other dictators contemplating similar assaults: You will get away
with it. Obama and those serving under him present themselves as
people of conscience. So we must ask: With millions of future lives
hanging in the balance, how can Obama and his administration fail to
devote their considerable political skill and our country's power to
ending our age's greatest scourge?
In retrospect, would anyone really disagree that, if such measures
could have prevented the Rwandan genocide and the deaths of 800,000,
then we should have taken them--regardless of international law's
obstructionism and whatever unease we might feel? So how can we say
that we shouldn't adopt these same measures to prevent the next
Rwanda, and the next one after that?
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is the author of Worse Than War: Genocide,
Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, from which this
piece is adapted.

Justin Abad essay 3
In an April 11 article for the Washington Post, journalists
Brzezinski
and Solarz opine that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would
forego peace if it meant parceling a portion of Jerusalem to
Palestine. For their part, Palestinians contend that East Jerusalem
should be their state capital. This is just a facet, albeit an
important one, of the ongoing turmoil between Israelis and
Palestinians that fuel the endless cycle of violent retaliation
between the two groups. The characters Titus and Tamora mirror this
same cycle in a smaller, but no less bloody, scale of revenge and
hatred that continues on and on in the world today. They both
represent two opposite sides of the same coin and neither will stop
while the other lives and thrives. Titus represents the Israelis, who
fights for his nation and believes wholly that what he is doing is
right and that his actions against Tamora and the Goths were
justified. Tamora decides to take it to the same level as Titus and
takes it out on his family in hopes of watching him suffer.
The self-same gods that arm’d the Queen of Toy
With opportunity of sharp revenge
Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent,
May favor Tamora, the Queen of Goths—
When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen—
To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes. (Demetrius Act 1.i 136-141)
It is evident that both Israelis and Palestinians are employing acts
of eliminationism against each other. Both sides act behind the
shield
of religion and use this as a way to frenzy the masses into joining
either side.
It is ironic that a play written in the early 1600’s can be
used to describe a similar conflict in today’s society and said
conflict is one that has raged on for almost a century. At the
beginning of the play, Titus cites an age-old Roman custom as reason
for sacrificing Tamora’s first born son in payment for the twenty-one
he lost during the ten years he went to war. This act starts the
sequence of events that end in Titus and Tamora losing their lives,
as
well as the lives all their children save two. Titus represents the
Israelis and Tamora represents the Arabs who were in Palestine under
the rule of the British in the early 1900’s. After the Israelis
helped
the British beat back the Arab revolt, Britain leaves Palestine a few
years later. The Israelis seized control and named it the state of
Israel which caused a mass exile of Arab civilians who lived in
Palestine to move to neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt. It
is similar to how Tamora has been forced from her homeland to go to
Rome and how she had to watch Titus take away her oldest son. The
next
conflict came when Tamora agrees to her lover Aaron’s plan of her two
sons killing Bassianus and then raping Lavinia, instructing them to
cut Lavinia’s tongue and her hands to keep her from revealing her
rapists. Thus does she visit her revenge on Titus.
Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life.
Or be ye not henceforth call’d my children. (Tamora Act II.3 114-115)
Titus and Tamora as well as Israel and Palestine continue their
conflict and the cycle of hatred, suffering and death. In the play
the
cycle of hatred only ends when nearly every major character in the
story is dead. This cannot be the solution to the conflict between
Israel and Palestine. Both sides have peace talks and truces most of
the time until a radical on either side breaks the treaty and attacks
innocent civilians.
In the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, one can easily
identify the elements of eliminationism that both sides employ. The
Israelis for example make life so hard for the Arabs or Palestinians
who still live in Israel that it will force them to leave.
Palestinians on the other hand are less subtle than their Israeli
counterparts. They employ suicide bombers who target civilians and
basically force Israeli citizens to leave their dwellings and move
away. These Palestinians are believed to be acting under the orders
of
a movement that Goldhagen describes in his book as Political Islam.
“Political Islam is many things: totalitarian, aggressive,
conquering,
cocksure about its superiority, and destiny to rule, bristling with
resentment, only tenuously in touch with aspects of reality.” This is
the basic definition that Goldhagen uses to describe Political Islam.
They are the ones who are pushing for Islamic supremacy in the Middle
East and they want those who are non-islamic to either leave or to
convert to their religion. The Israeli government however is not
completely blameless in this matter. During last year’s peace talks,
Israel went forward with construction of housing units in the West
Bank, defying President Obama’s request to halt the expansion of
Israeli settlements as a gesture of goodwill and cooperation towards
the Palestinians. This in turn gave Arab states a reason to step
back
from the negotiation talks, thus stymieing any progress in
establishing a peace deal (“The Settlements Issue,” 2009). Both
sides
have determined that if they do not get what they want they would
rather go to war and keep up the cycle of violence. In Titus
Andronicus, Tamora refuses to stop her quest of vengeance of Titus
until all his children are dead and he himself dies after he suffers.
Titus went to the next level when he found out what Tamora planned
and
how Lavinia was raped by her two sons. Titus killed Tamora’s two sons
and fed them to her in a pie. The level these two were willing to go
to get their revenge was just barbaric. The Israeli and Palestinian
conflict has gone on for so long that we need to use aggressive and
firm negotiations and also a forceful approach to this debacle. I
believe that as long as the Israelis will be given Jerusalem and
Palestinians would be given the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank
without any military occupations by Israel, a tenuous peace agreement
may be reached. Palestinian citizens should also be treated fairly
and
be allowed to live peacefully should they want to in Israel and they
should not have to be forced out. Palestine and the Arab states, in
turn, need to signal a greater acceptance of Israel. Last year,
President Obama unsuccessfully lobbied for Arab states to grant
overflight rights to Israeli planes, and for the states to open trade
and consular offices in Israel (“Squandering the Moment, 2009). More
recently, the Obama administration is pushing for “proximity talks,”
with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell traveling back and forth
between Jerusalem and the West Bank in an effort to revive the two-
state solution (“Diplomacy 102,” 2010). The United Nations along
with
the United States and the European Union should enforce this treaty
and severely punish those who would try to break whatever peace is
formed between the two sides. If we are able to accomplish these
things we might be able to halt the century long violence that has
plagued this part of the world perhaps even permanently. We should
also make sure that the influence of both Israeli militant groups and
Political Islam extremist should be kept away from the leaders of
both
sides. I believe that this will probably be the most difficult part
of
this solution. The influence of these two groups are far reaching and
they are both willing to do anything to get what they want and they
also believe with all their body and soul that what they are doing
and
what they must do is justified by their God.
Brian Cox’s piece on Titus states, “ In our century the context for
this play has never been more powerful. When Peter Brook produced it
in 1951 the shadow of totalitarianism was very much upon us… And now
we have the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the breakdown of social
units…This may seem an over-generalized spectrum of events relating
to
just one play by Shakespeare, but every one of those incidents has
its
parallel in Titus Andronicus’ (1993: 176). The similarities we find
when we look closely at the violence and eliminationist methods
employed today and the brutality that Shakespeare writes about in his
play shows how similar we are today and also in the past. Furthermore
the two most violent characters in the play were Titus and Tamora.
They both showed willingness and ingenuity in their methods of
revenge
against one another. They both targeted the others loved ones because
they wanted the other party to suffer before succumbing to death in
the end. The Israeli and Palestinians also displayed their brutality
and eliminationist acts towards civilians of the other group. They
rarely attacked a military compound or a military base; rather they
chose to concentrate their attacks on civilian population centers. I
still believe that with aggressive and forceful diplomacy we will be
able to settle this century long conflict that has plagued the people
who reside in said lands of conflict.
References
Brzezinski, Z. and Solarz, S. (2010, April 11). To achieve Mideast
peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip. The Washington Post.
Retrieved May 19, 2010, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR201...
Cox, B. (1993). “Titus Andronicus”, in Players of Shakespeare 3:
Further Essays in Shakespearian Performance by Players with the Royal
Shakespeare Company, eds. Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood. New
York: Cambridge, 174-88.
(2010, March 10). Diplomacy 102. Ed. The New York Times. Retrieved
May 18, 2010, from .
(2009, July 30). The Settlements Issue. Ed. The New York Times.
Retrieved May 19, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31fri1.html.
(2009, September 15). Squandering the Moment. Ed. The New York
Times. Retrieved May 18, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/opinion/15tue1.html
Goldhagen, D.J. (2009). Worse Than War: ...

Bibliography
Goldhagen, D. (2006, November 24). Daniel Goldhagen on political Islam
and National Socialism. (S. Fischer, Interviewer)





A. In the article, Goldhagen talks about how America’s method of
appeasement with political Islamic groups and he states that out of
all society’s today, Islam has the most similarities with Nazism than
any other political movement. I heartily agree with Goldhagen’s point
of view with the subject and how Islam political movements depict the
same hatred the Nazis used to exhibit. They have eerie similarities
in the fact that they view death, even suicide, as glorious. They are
also very intolerant of other religions aside from their own.
B. The one thing I did not like about the article was that Goldhagen
was criticizing the way our government was handling the matter. As
much as I would like to condone action it is neither possible nor
plausible to just randomly bomb another country. We would be doing
what they themselves are doing and that is harming people just because
of their beliefs. Not everybody who is Islamic thinks like the zealots
and extremists do.
C. What I would like to look more into is what our government is
currently planning to do and when we are going to do it. I also want
to learn how we are going to go about convincing other nations that
the course of action we are going to take is the right one.



Justin Abad
English Spring 2010 Section #0143
02.19.10

In Goldhagen’s book, “Worse than War”, he discusses what he believes
as the cause of genocide and his theory of eliminationism. Goldhagen
stresses that if we extinguish the eliminationism then we would have
the capacity to prevent future genocidal acts. He also goes in depth
of what the people who orchestrated the genocides over our recent
history were thinking at the time. All of them believed so profoundly
that what they were doing in their opinion was for the greater good.
It is revealed to us in his writings of how genocides or
eliminationist measures are usually political moves made by
politicians to either garner support from their people, instill fear,
or to purify what they believe to be a scourge. Goldhagen continues on
to blaming this on society as a whole and how we realize and act too
late because of various issues.

Even though Goldhagen makes a valid argument I am inclined to disagree
with him on some points. The first I would like to point out is
Goldhagen criticizing the United Nations as well as individual
governments for “Serious diplomatic efforts have been meager. The
occasional military response has been years late”. The United Nations
is a committee of leaders and as such rarely ever fully agreeing on
anything. They also have a certain procedures they must follow before
they can intervene, especially in such cases of eliminationism. The
second point I need to address is Goldhagen’s statement that “A world
of democracies would be a world without mass murder, or, at worst,
with an enormously reduced incidence of it.” Just because a country’s
government considers itself democratic will not guarantee that its
people will be safe from domestic insurgents and perhaps even the
government itself. As long as politically powerful people are in the
world there will always be that chance for genocide to happen and
nothing can prevent that.

In my opinion Goldhagen’s book gives us a well defined image of
genocide and what causes people to even contemplate the act itself. I
believe, however, as optimistic as his solutions are they are not
realistically possible or logical. We cannot simply overhaul the way
the world works. War and violence has been part of human nature since
the beginning of our species and for some people it is what drives
them. There is also that sense of power those who orchestrate
genocides feel when they look at a group of people and they can feel
the control they have over whether or not those people live or die.
Furthermore I whole-heartedly believe that as long as we retain our
human nature that hunger for power and violence will continue to exist
and that we can try our best to prevent genocides but at the same time
realize that there is always a possibility of it occurring again.


GOLDHAGEN; WORSE THAN WAR
Week (1) Research & Journal
English 101, Spring 2010 online, Section #0143
Student: Justin Abad
3a. I disagree that intentional attacks on civilians is the world’s
greatest problem. More people die by diseases and the statistics
comparing both lean towards disease. I believe that incurable diseases
are what we should e focusing on. While casualties in war only happen
when there is war the death rate for diseases remain the same and
rarely fluctuate. Millions of people in third world nations die
needlessly every year because they do not receive the medical
attention they need.
3b. I believe that as long as human beings exist so will war and
violence. War is very much part of our human nature. It is the laws of
society that keep this instinct in humans in check, but sometimes like
in all things there are some who are exceptions to the rule and break
off that leash. The farthest we can possibly go is to limit war but it
will always be a part of our culture.
3c. It is the duty of any military organization to limit warfare to be
between soldiers. It is quite optimistic for someone to think that
civilians will always remain unscathed during war. Every battle has
its collateral damage. We must try and make sure that military
confrontations should limit its involvement of civilians.


Justin A.
In the book Worse than War, Goldhagen discusses how genocidal acts
should be prevented and its perpetrators brought to justice. Goldhagen
then proposes way similar to bounty-hunting individuals who commit
these heinous acts. Goldhagen stated that “so long as people wage war
against humanity, killing those people is a defensive act”. These
people who orchestrate genocide would think twice before doing so
because they would have no asylum whatsoever if Goldhagen’s monetary
prevention program would be implemented. With all governments of all
countries in the world compounded into this program would easily deter
anybody from committing genocidal acts knowing full well that they
cannot escape and that they would either spend life in prison or face
the death penalty. The program would also monetarily compensate those
who provide information for the culprits and even those who kill the
culprits themselves. Amos Guira, a Professor at the University of Utah
believes that “targeted killings are lawful, predicated on the
following caveats.” We must consider that there are people who just
plainly deserve to die for the things they have done.
Goldhagen’s method however is criticized on how killing them, would
be unjustified and also the prospect of mercenary killing on another
country’s soil without their consent is illegal. David Kaye at the
UCLA school of Law states that “Under international law, it's a basic
rule that you don't operate in another state without its consent.” We
must also consider our morality on the issue. Phillip Alston a U.N.
special reporter also stated that “There is no legal justification for
the cold-blooded murder of a man who, if alleged to have committed
crimes, could have been arrested and charged.” We cannot dictate
without a fair trial whether a human being should be killed.
Goldhagen’s method is considered extreme by some due to the strains it
would cause between countries when it comes to international politics.
On the topic I heartily agree with Goldhagen that we should be
prepared to intervene and take responsibility should anybody decide to
commit genocidal acts anywhere in the world. If eliminationism in
anyway shape or form and do nothing to stop it then they are
responsible as much as the people who commit the acts in the first
place. Sometimes it is very simple to eliminate a handful of these
genocidal opportunists instead of waiting for them to kill thousands
of people before we are finally forced to act. Despite the human
rights laws that the U.N. and other countries create and preach about,
there are still a lot of people out there who do not fear the
consequences of mass killing people. They do not fear retribution from
other countries or by the United Nations. We must instill in those
types of people the same fear they instill in their victims. They have
shown no form of mercy towards those they kill so why should we in
turn show them any mercy. Furthermore Goldhagen supports the idea of
monetary prevention program and I support his view as well. People who
do not think twice about mass murder should no longer be considered
people.
Essay 1.2
In the three editorials, the three authors believed in the decision
President Harry Truman made to drop the atomic bomb on both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. President Truman weighed the decision to drop the bomb
due to the heavy and zealous resistance by the Japanese. Truman
considered the losses the allies would receive should they invade
Japan’s mainland when they already saw firsthand the tenacity the
Japanese defenders displayed over two small and unimportant little
islands. All the editorials said were that the dropping of the two
bombs was better in the long run overall and that the lesser of two
evils was picked. In my opinion I think that the option to snuff out
over a hundred thousand lives in an instant is a choice that no man
should even think of considering. I strongly believe that the means
of one’s decisions should be justified. Truman was not even thinking
of what the aftereffects of the bombs were he was only considering the
end of the war. The effects of the bombing for years to come are
enough proof of the grotesque choice Harry Truman made.
One of the main reasons Truman bombed Hiroshima was because “Truman's
strategy had the wholehearted support of his new Secretary of State,
James Byrnes, who, like Stimson, viewed the new weapon as a vital card
in postwar relations with Moscow”. I believe that America back then
was like a kid with a gun. They were the most dangerous and they had
to just show and parade their military prowess. The bombing of
Hiroshima was a very callous decision to save the lives of American
soldiers. The killing of over 200,000 civilians cannot be justified by
any means. You cannot put a price on any person’s life. It is morally
deplorable. Another point that I find to be wrong, in my opinion, is
the fact that “Harry Truman was given a military option to end the
war. It was not used out of racism -- the atomic bomb was originally
developed for use against Germany. Truman used what he had, and today,
because of his decision, millions more Americans and Japanese --
including children and grandchildren of soldiers and civilians who
would have died in the autumn war of 1945 -- are alive, and free”. We
also have to think about the people who died and those who died later
as a result of the radiation as well as the deformed children of the
next generation that were born that way due to the effects of the
bombs.
I believe that the United States should not have dropped that bomb.
It displayed to the whole world that even we would stoop that low to
get what we want. If I was Truman I would have tried to negotiate with
the Japanese and the farthest I would go is to threaten them with the
bomb, but I would never actually detonate it. I would employ our
government’s greatest weapon, diplomacy. We cannot act without
thinking both logically and morally. Furthermore I believe that the
bombings in Japan ws one if not the most atrocious mistake our country
has ever made.


Essay 2 roughdraft
Throughout recorded history, Nazi Germany’s mass slaughtering of Jews
not just in their country but in countries they occupied was the most
well known act of genocide that has occurred in history. Hitler was
very thorough in his methods and he ended up being responsible for the
deaths of over six million Jews. It was not until the American
invasion of Europe that the discovery of the concentration camps was
made. Hitler systematically severed almost all Jews from Germany to
France and placed them in concentration camps. Hitler was able to
convince most of Germany that Jews were the reason why their country
was weak and that they were no good as a people. He defined that as a
people, the Aryan race was superior and that it was the Jews that were
making them weak. Goldhagen describes how the German’s thought of Jews
as “useless eaters”, and also of “life unworthy of living”. This
mentality was so embedded in the German’s minds that the torture and
brutality of the Jews was like “bread to the body” for them. They kept
Jews alive so that the next day they could make them suffer all over
again. The pictures of the Jews liberated at concentration camps and
the skeletal frames and hollow eyes still remain as one of the
testaments to the cruelty of the Nazis. The German mentality was so
severe that when they bombed the Warsaw Ghetto to put down a Jewish
rebellion they felt proud that they killed four hundred thousand Jews
and not a single house was left standing. The Germans brutality to the
Jews is legendary and it surpasses that of any genocidal act to date.
They even created a certain pyramid to which people in Europe were
judged on how sub-human they are. They would even perform experiments
on their captives to show how different they are with their own race
and also their superiority.
Journal 10-11
Tom Cruise in the movie Valkyrie as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg
decided that Hitler had gone too far and he realized that if the war
dragged on that Germany would suffer and that many more of his people
would die. He and some other officers and important politicians
hatched a plan to assassinate Hitler. He knew the risks that were
involved in their plan that should they succeed and should they fail.
He put his life on the line even when he knew he might never see his
family ever again. Even though they failed and were executed when
other countries got wind of what happened they knew that not all of
Germany was going along with Hitler. It is usually the people of the
country of that one person who organizes a genocide that do not do
anything or who decide to even join in the killings. Stauffenberg
should be used as an example and that if more people are willing to do
what is right more than what is easy then genocides would be easily
preventable.

Essay 3 roughdraft
For my essay I will use the characters Titus and Tamora to demonstrate
the endless cycle of revenge and hatred that continues on and on in
the world today. A lot of problems in today’s world are inspired or
started by the cycle of revenge. When people act out of hate their
victims end up hating them and the cycle goes on and on. For example
after what the Germans did in the holocaust Jew agents started
arresting former Nazi officers and executing them. Some of the
officers no doubt deserved execution, but some of them were not even
involved in the concentration camps and they were only soldiers on the
battlefield. Another example is the battle over the Gaza Strip between
the Palestinians and Jews. They keep killing each other over and over
again and it hasn’t stopped. Most of the time the civilians are harmed
instead of military targets and with this the people on both sides
continue to resent one another and the hatred festers and soon a
potential genocide on both sides might occur.

The hostility between Israeli’s and Palestinians has existed for
almost a hundred years now. It was under British rule in the 1900’s
that the first embers of hatred were ignited. Then “by the 1930s, the
numbers of Jews had risen to a point that alarmed many Palestinian
Arab leaders.”, and this caused the Arab revolt of 1918. It was after
the revolt when the British finally had enough and left in 1948 that
Jews in Palestine split off from the Arabs and formed the State of
Israel. It was this time around as well that there a was a surge in
the movement of Zionism, which prompted many Jews from all over the
world to move back to their ancestral homeland. The largest rise in
the Jewish population in Israel was during and after World War II and
the Holocaust. Many Jews who faced persecution and who had no homes to
return to during and after the war had only one place to go to. This
caused a lot of hatred with not just the Arabs in Palestine but also
the Arabs in surrounding countries like Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. The
Jews won the war and it caused a mass exile of Arabs. Over the next
following years

Essay 1.b
In Jonah Goldhagen’s book, Worse than War, he describes the various
reasons people who commit genocides act the way they do. Most people
believe in the goodness of human beings and that most of the people
who perpetrated genocide did so under duress or were coerced by their
leaders. It is a sad and sobering truth that most of these genocides
had many very willing participants and that they did so
enthusiastically. Goldhagen even stated in his book that “when select
individuals have not wanted to kill, the regime did not make them.”
The people who killed reluctantly did not disprove of the killings.
It
is usually political suicide to try to convince people to commit such
heinous crimes. The said politician would lose the support he needs
to
stay in position. People have to be already willing to go through
with
the slaughter before it begins. Goldhagen also shot down the idea
that
people follow through with genocide because of the law or their
government. Goldhagen said that “people disobey, evade, and ignore
state and governmental orders, laws, and regulations all the time.”
Ultimately people would not commit genocide if they truly thought it
to be wrong. Even those who reluctantly do it still somewhat agree to
the act of genocide. The people who are put on trial for war crimes
and crimes against humanity are sometimes pardoned because they are
ordered to do it or were threatened to do it. The author states that
he is conflicted with the way psychology plays into the actions of
the
people who commit genocide. It is hard to see if people are actually
doing it because of their agreement with the killing. How can the
perpetrators of such crimes say they were forced to do such evil
things when they were able to do a face to face personal killing.
Most of these genocides were committed in a face to face personal
fashion where the killer could look at his victim’s eyes and to some
even admire their handiwork. Another idea that Goldhagen presented
was
that the perpetrators of genocide sought out riches and material
possessions that the people they eliminated had. A thought however
comes to mind when you consider that there are people willing to kill
an enormous amount of people including women and children just to
earn
a few dollars. Goldhagen disagrees with this postulate because he
knows that it is not a logical enough reason for people to do these
kinds of things.
I believe that Goldhagen makes a really good point in
the fact
that people sometimes do not need a reason to commit genocide other
than that their leaders let them. Human beings as a whole are a very
violent species. We are one the only species that kill each other to
such an extent as eliminating whole communities and races. It is part
of our human nature to lust for violence and some of us can suppress
that part of our nature enough to live day to day without even
thinking of hurting somebody. I disagree with Goldhagen on the fact
that law and the government do not play an important role when it
comes to people committing genocide. A leader can whip up people into
frenzy with his or her charisma and that alone is enough to make
people do what you want. We also need to consider the role religion
plays in all this. Some of the genocides throughout history have been
condoned and even supported by zealous religious factions. Authority
can play a very pivotal part in our decision making. Although
Goldhagen points out that people do ignore and break the law you must
also consider the ramifications of what will happen should they break
that law. When you threaten someone’s livelihood, belief, and their
life, they either rebel or do anything you want them to do. I agree
with Goldhagen on the point that people who reason that they were
forced to do something should not be punished because even if they
were forced to do so it was still their decision. You cannot argue
semantics in a court of morality. I think that people who willingly
commit such acts of genocide do so because they fully believe and
support what they are doing and that they see nothing wrong in the
slaughter of so many people. The leader of the perpetrators often
play upon long established prejudices between ethnicities or groups
as
a way to rationalize the elimination of the other group. Furthermore
you cannot justify the killing of so many people indiscriminately.
You
cannot argue why their killing is justified and they should be
punished for the things they have done.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Altman, L. J. (2009) . Genocide: The systematic killing of
a
people. New Jersey: Enslow.
2. Baum, S. K. (2008) . The psychology of genocide:
Perpetrators,
bystanders, and rescuers. New York: Cambridge.
3. Goldhagen, D. J. (2009) . Worse than war: Genocide,
eliminationism,
and the ongoing assault on humanity. New York: Public Affairs.
Part 2
It was a very cold night deep in the hills of Poland. My name is
Oberleutnant Albrecht Emmerich. I have been stationed here for the
past two years to guard over these prisoners. For two years I have
seen people come into the camp with no knowledge of what horror and
suffering awaits them. I do not particularly have an issue with the
Jews and the Poles that come into this camp daily. I fail to see how
a
group of such weak willed people could prove as a threat to the
Fuhrer. He blames them for the stagnation of our country and those
them inferior to us. As I walk and enjoy my cigarette break I see one
of my soldiers running towards me. It was Franz Heilbronner, he was a
Schutze in the army and had yet to see combat. He reports to me that
the Soviet Army is closing in on the camp and that we have direct
orders from Reichsfuhrer Himmel that we were to erase any evidence of
the camp including its occupants. I tossed my cigarette in the snow
and calmly asked him how much munitions we had left and he told me
that since the Soviets had thrown our supply lines into disarray that
we had little left. I proceeded to inquire about our food supply and
he told me that we had an excess left over from the last shipment. I
looked at the camp and at the thousands of people who were inside and
I thought to myself better us than them. I never felt any sort of
animosity towards these people and that my actions were justified by
the will of my country and that I was doing them a service by
eliminating these sub humans. I looked back at Franz and told him to
set fire to the gas chambers and the crematoriums. When he asked me
what to do with the prisoners I told him that we were to arm the men
and we were going to shoot as many of the prisoners as possible. He
looked at me with a sick expression on his face and I sternly told
him
that orders were orders and that we had no choice but to follow them.
So we carried as much food and medical supplies we could carry and
then set the supply building on fire. We soon went to the camp and
the
blood bath began. There were six hundred of us guarding the camp and
each person was equipped with about eighty bullets and we spent them
all on the prisoners. We soon ran out and had to use our bayonets and
proceeded to slaughter the prisoners. We soon heard artillery fire
coming in from the east and we ceased our massacre and left the camp
but we locked the gate to make sure that nobody would be able to
leave. It was too late for us to set fire to the rest of the compound
and we left the prisoners to their fate. It would be ten years later
after the war that I would come to regret my decision. I was living
in
a small farm that my family owned outside of Berlin when I was
arrested and brought to court by Israeli Mossad operatives.
Apparently
one of the survivors remembered my name and face and was able to
relay
to them that I was the one who organized the massacre of the camp.
They even had Franz there who testified that he did what he did
because I forced him to obey my orders along with various members of
my unit. I already knew that there was no escaping my fate and that I
was destined to die at the hands of the people that I have imprisoned
and killed during the war. I looked the judge straight in the face
and
told him that all their accusations were correct and that I did what
I
did because I agreed with the Fuhrer and that their people should not
be allowed to live. I locked eyes with each man in my unit and they
knew the message I was sending them. They too were responsible for
what happened that night. They knew deep down that even without
orders
they would have relished the actions they took that night. I walked
slowly to my execution. I saw the noose that was tied and I knew then
and there that I was going to die and I remembered my life and I
regret that all people would know me for would be the slaughter of
thousands of Jews under my orders.

Week 5-7 journal

SRES 316 IS
a.) The most important part of this Bill that I liked was the
fact
that we actually intervened on behalf of the Armenians that were
being
deported or killed and we did so without being provoked into action
or
because we saw something that would be advantageous for our country.
The Bill states that the President must be sensitive and sympathetic
to race, cultures, or religions that face persecution in their own
country and also who face issues of ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity. Goldhagen’s writing reflects the bill perfectly in
how we should get involved when we see signs of genocide occurring
and
how we should also punish those responsible for it.
b.) I do not like that this bill should have been introduced and
drafted right after the Armenian Genocide. It is almost a hundred
years too late for this bill. The latest action it has seen was the
bill being referred to the Committee of Foreign Relations. It has
more
than a dozen Co-sponsors and hopefully it will be passed soon. We
cannot wait for another tragedy to happen before we consider this
bill
again.
c.) One thing I cannot understand about the bill is who has the
right
to determine whether a foreign government can be allowed to operate
within certain limits when it comes to the treatment of its citizens.
I find it hard to understand how our country can police other
countries and tell them how to run their governments. I also
discovered another topic that keeps bugging me about this bill. I do
not understand how we can carry out justice when we could not even
execute those responsible for the Armenian genocide. The bill is a
sound idea, but enforcing it might be a little tricky if it passes.