Sunday, February 14, 2010

Humphrey and history

In 1967  Hubert Humphrey travelled to Germany. During that visit some s0-called 'hippie' trouble-makers had plans to bomb him during a speaking engagement. The Police thwarted the attack which turned out to me nothing but a bomb full of pudding. Not much retribution for a guy who had taken such an active part in the Vietnam war where US forces killed literally hundreds of thousands of souls. 

Today a NATO rocket killed 12 civilians. Sadly a fairly small event in a long war where thousands of civilians have died. When I was growing up in the States, politicians and people never tired of telling me that the war in Vietnam was a morally just war in service of Christian good. They demonized the people they were fighting in Vietnam so their deaths would somehow not really count. History  has rendered its verdict. 

Do you think the parents of the children that have died in NATO bombings care whether their children were killed by this side or that side? I doubt it very much. I think they just mourn for their children who have been sacrificed to decades (perhaps centuries) of struggle for power between ruling classes who care little for the people in their thirst for money, gold, oil and influence. 

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