OK, Occam’s Razor would indicate that Barack Obama has a maternal great uncle (i.e., his mother’s mother’s brother), named Charles Payne (middle initial unclear) who served with the 355th Infantry that liberated one of the camps in the Buchenwald complex, despite previous concerns on that score.
It seems very unlikely that he would have a great uncle by that name, and that someone by that name would have had that service record, who also was an Obama political supporter, and he would put forth such a story, and that they are not the same person, despite the confusion about the middle initial. So, if we ignore the “Auschwitz” reference, and the fact that he calls his great uncle his uncle (understandable, given that he had no actual uncles, at least on his mother’s side), the story is accurate.
But it’s not that easy to ignore Auschwitz.
That’s because “Auschwitz” has become one of the most emotionally charged words in the English (well, OK, it’s not English–it’s German) language. It’s one of the most emotionally charged words in any language, for anyone who is aware of what happened there, and few educated people aren’t, regardless of their native language.
The word is significant in the context of the Obama campaign for two reasons.
First, because it has such emotional connotations, particularly for Jews, with whom Obama has had trouble closing the deal, it looks like he’s pandering to them. I’m not saying that he is, but it has that appearance.
Auschwitz was the site of the deliberate extermination of many of them (as well as Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others deemed “unworthy of life” by the National Socialists aka Nazis) and one might cynically think that an attempt to say that one of his family members was responsible for the liberation of the camp would give that constituency a warmer feeling for him, despite his many foreign policy advisors who clearly are not fans of the state of Israel (e.g., Zbig).
Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis.
But beyond that, it is of concern because it reveals a profound ignorance of history and/or geography.
Anyone familiar with the history of World War II knows that Auschwitz (despite its Germanic name, which like Dansk to Danzig after the conquest in 1939, was a rename–the Polish name is Oswiecim), was in the occupied country of Poland, which before the war had hundreds of thousands of Jews, and after the war had…virtually none.
Furthermore, anyone familiar with that history knows that American troops never advanced past the River Elbe, in Germany, and that the Soviet forces advanced all the way across Poland and into eastern Germany, raping and pillaging as they went. Which is why there was an East Germany. Has Barack never heard of that “country,” which was a colony of the Soviet Union, of which his mother was not obviously unfond (to understate the issue)?
No one, in other words, familiar with that history, would imagine that an American soldier, under Patton, had contributed to the “liberation” (scare quotes because the Soviets never liberated anyone–they only enslaved them) of Auschwitz.
Obama didn’t know this. Nor, apparently, did anyone on his staff, since he had been spouting the same fable since 2002 and no one had bothered to correct him. Or if they had, they were ignored. I’m not sure which is worse.
Given his unfamiliarity with Jack Kennedy’s less-than-successful negotiations with Khrushchev, it makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know.
[Late evening update]
Some have taken issue of my characterization of Buchenwald as “merely a slave labor camp.”
This has to be taken in context. I’m not sure what part of “atrocious beyond human understanding” with regard to that camp the commenters don’t understand.
I wasn’t excusing it in any way. I was simply pointing out that in the historical context of war, in which civilians were generally enslaved or killed, and disposed of when they could no longer work, it was hardly abnormal. Auschwitz (and Treblinka, and Sobibor, and Chelmo, and Betzec, and Majdenek) were in a separate class, previously unknown, which gave rise to the term “genocide,” in which the intent was to wipe out an entire people. I’m sorry that some don’t get the point.
[Thursday morning update]
Well, I certainly seem to have stirred up a hornet’s nest among some. Let me pick up the remains of the straw men that were strewn around and kicked apart here overnight.
For the record, I did not say, or imply, that Buchenwald was a summer camp. I did not say, or imply, that the leftist Hitler’s crimes were a “drop in the bucket” compared to the leftist Stalin’s. I did not say, or imply, that working people to death is not murdering them. I did not say, or imply, that anyone’s death (including Anne Frank’s) was less tragic because it occurred at Bergen-Belsen than at Auschitz. I did not say, or imply, that I would “smile with satisfaction” if I were at Buchenwald instead of Auschwitz.
I’m not sure how to have a rational discussion with anyone nutty enough to have managed to infer any of the above from what I actually wrote.
Also, for the record, I am not now, and have never been a Republican, or (AFAIK) a “right winger,” unless by that phrase one means a classical liberal. As for “sitting down with my Jewish friends and discussing this,” I not only have Jewish friends, but Jewish relatives by blood, or perhaps I should say had, because they include many who doubtless died in both types of camps.
[Update a few minutes later]
One other straw man. I did not say, or imply, that because of this single incident Barack Obama was unfit to be president of the United States. But it is part, albeit a small one, of a much larger tapestry.
[One more update]
To the people in comments asking me what I meant by this, or why I wrote it, I don’t know how to better explain my points than I already have. If after having actually read it carefully, for comprehension, you still don’t get it, or willfully choose to misinterpret it, I can’t help you.
[Update again]
OK, I’ll make one attempt, for those who think that I am somehow “minimizing” what happened at Buchenwald. Perhaps they don’t understand the true meaning of the word “atrocious,” as in the phrase I used, “atrocious beyond human understanding.”
I wasn’t using it in perhaps a more popular (and trivial) sense as “that movie or meal was atrocious.” I was using it in its most literal sense, as in a place where actual atrocities occurred. The two words are related, you know?
[Update about 9:30]
If I change the phrase “merely a slave labor camp,” which is what seems to be generating such irrational fury and umbrage, to “not a site for the extermination of a people on an industrial scale,” will that mollify people? Probably not, but I’ll do it anyway.
[Afternoon update]
I’m wondering how much of the rampant insanity, straw mannery and outrage in comments would have been avoided had I merely omitted the word “merely”.
[Friday morning update]
I have one final (I hope) follow up post on this subject.
Mr. O’Bama is one of the least informed major candidates to come along in a long while, perhaps even the least informed in my lifetime. The more I see of him, the more I ponder the similarities to Chauncey Gardner from “Being There”.
Recall that W was raked over the coals for not knowing — off the cuff — the name of the Prime Minister of Ireland. I thought at the time that this was a bizarre demand, inasmuch as I have three degrees from MIT, am a political junkie, and I didn’t (and still don’t) know the name of the Prime Minister of Ireland…. But the depths of Obama’s ignorance are being plumbed daily and we haven’t hit bottom. Auschwitz? Buchenwald? What difference does it make? Who cares where it is? Kennedy and Krushchev? Friends, right? That’s why relations with the Soviets were so mellow back in the 1960’s, right? “How’s it going, Sunshine?” Wellesleyan? Where did the other ten states go? Rev Wright a racist? Who knew? Afghanistan is part of are Arabia, right? Hamas is a terrorist group? I thought it was that stuff you eat with pita chips… (okay, I made that last one up).
The sad thing is that I think it really doesn’t matter to the electorate. As W figured out a long time ago, most people don’t vote for “smarts”, they vote for “likeables”. And Obama does sound good. I hate to draw the parallel, but Reagan bitterly disgusted the MSM of his day — it seemed he could never get his facts straight, but no actual voter seemed to care. As the story goes, Reagan would include in his stump speech a story about a welfare queen in Los Angeles who scammed $300,000 a year and owned three Cadillacs. The press would fact-check (what a concept — MSM fact-checking), and then bemoan the ignorance of the Republican candidate… because it turned out the welfare queen lived in Chicago, not Los Angeles, and it wasn’t $300,000, it was $150,000, and dang it, they were Lincoln Town Cars, NOT CADILLACS! THIS GUY IS MADE OF TEFLON! But people understood and bought into Reagan’s world view, despite the “gaffes”. So I’m afraid that enough people will buy into this Iraq-war-sucks, it’s-our-fault, let’s try being nice to our enemies, let’s share, avoid-the-money-culture… that our next President will be a Chauncey Gardner with Farrakhan clones pulling the strings.
BBB
OBAMA’S GREAT UNCLE SPEAKS.
This one is Jon Payne, the much younger brother of Charles T. Payne, the WWII vet. Jon Payne was something of a “sibling” to Obama’s mother, and knew Barack when he was a boy.Obama’s great uncle Charles T. Payne of…
A decent point, but not as strong as you suggest, given that Buchenwald would become part of East Germany, not West.
Unless you’re going to accuse the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum of lying (which, really, you’re free to do), I think the assertion of :
“Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet.”
…is disturbing.
“Merely a slave labor camp?”
From the site:
“Beginning in 1941, a number of physicians and scientists carried out a varied program of medical experimentation on prisoners at Buchenwald in special barracks in the northern part of the main camp.”
…and…
“Periodically, prisoners throughout the Buchenwald camp system underwent selection. The SS staff sent those too weak or disabled to work to euthanasia facilities such as Bernburg, where euthanasia operatives gassed them as part of Operation 14f13, the extension of euthanasia killing operations to ill and exhausted concentration camp prisoners. Other prisoners unable to work were killed by phenol injections administered by the camp doctor.”
I’m not sure that being executed for being too weak to work qualifies as dying “under the stress of work and disease.”
Further, reading a history of the camp from the German memorial site (http://www.buchenwald.de/), makes the assertion of it being “merely a slave labor camp” laughable, but in a very sad way.
When the camp was liberated, there were some 21,000 inmates left… in the camp’s history, 14,000 had perished. Maybe they just should have worked harder.
To be sure, the horrors of Auschwitz were Buchenwald compounded multiple, multiple times, but to actually type, with all seriousness, “merely a slave labor camp?”
You must be joking; either that or you have some right-wing equivalent to BDS, in which minimizing the horror of human suffering is ok so long as it stops Obama from being President.
(By the way, I’m most likely voting for McCain, despite efforts like yours to make me swing the other way.)
“Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet.”
…is disturbing.
What part of “atrocious beyond human understanding” do you not understand? I wasn’t defending Buchenwald. I was simply pointing out that Auschwitz was even worse, and especially to Jewish people.
Minor geographical correction to an otherwise good post:
The river in Germany you mention is actually the ELBE.”
The Elbe also holds some notoriety since it’s where the cremated ashes of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and the Goebbels Family were reportedly dumped in 1970 by the Soviets after being repeatedly exhumed and moved after the war.
Conversely, there is an ELBA. It’s the island off the Italian Tuscan coast where Napoleon was interned after he abdicated in 1814. He subsequently escaped the following year and, as we all know, things didn’t turn out so well for him at Waterloo.
The river in Germany you mention is actually the ELBE.
Thanks, fixed.
I find it interesting that everyone is getting excited about Obama confusing Auschwitz with Buchenwald. The reason I find it funny is that the actual extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was at Birkenau not Auschwitz. So you are just as wrong as Obama. He probably didn’t hear the story first hand and it is quite posible he was told Auschwitz scince it is the brand name concentration camp. If I had to guess 90 percent of Americans think Auschwitz is in Germany. In the end anyone who lets this be the deciding factor in the 2008 election for them is just sad.
Note well that Buchenwald became more that “a mere slave labor camp”. At the end thousands were starved to death, and stacked in warehouses. Even before the end, folks were worked to death, malnourished, etc. — and the mortality rate was staggering. Not a gas using Auschwitz style extermination camp, but a death camp never-the-less.
I doubt anyone is less a supporter of Obama than I am, but this is a non-issue. Uncle is often a generic term used for varying degrees of sanguinity. I have great uncles and what not and addressed them all as uncle.
To confuse Buchenwald with Auschwitz is not that big of a deal. Both were terrible, and it was more than 60 years ago. One is not historically illiterate simply because they named the wrong camp.
This is the most minor of slips, and is essentially correct for the purpose for which it was used.
The danger with complaining about silly things like this is that it detracts from the really serious problems this man has. If people are going to complain about this, which is obviously unimportant, it will cause people to think that the other issues are equally unimportant.
I have got to say that if this is a faux pas that makes Obama unfit for the Presidency, then McCain should be removed immediately from the Senate for getting fundamental facts wrong about a current war. Whether it was Buchenwald or Auschwitz matters quite a bit less than whether or not the Sunnis or Shiites are trained in Iran.
In other words: double dumbass on you.
Technically Auschwitz and Danzig were not post-39 “renames”. Those areas had been German (for want of a better expression) or had had substantial German urban populations for almost 700 years by 1939. Most of the towns from the Oder/Elbe to Transylvania to the Baltics had legitimate German names all through the Middle Ages.
Just a technical correction that does not affect the gist of your post.
It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II, when his only experience with a Dachau or Treblinka was sitting in a darkened room watching movies of those events. “You believed in it because you wanted to believe it,” Reagan once told a reporter who thought he had seen Reagan on the set of a movie which didn’t feature him at all. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time.”
It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II, when his only experience with a Dachau or Treblinka was sitting in a darkened room watching movies of those events. “You believed in it because you wanted to believe it,” Reagan once told a reporter who thought he had seen Reagan on the set of a movie which didn’t feature him at all. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time.”
It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II, when his only experience with a Dachau or Treblinka was sitting in a darkened room watching movies of those events. “You believed in it because you wanted to believe it,” Reagan once told a reporter who thought he had seen Reagan on the set of a movie which didn’t feature him at all. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time.”
the important point of Obama’s statement is his assertion that his “uncle” was psychically shattered by the event, so much so that he shut himself up in an attic for months upon his return home. This portrait feeds into the leftist myth that all returning warriors are damaged goods. We, of course, know that is not true. Some, yes, and they deserve all the care and support we can give them. All? No way.
The key thing to check into is whether his uncle went shithouse rat after Buchenwald, or if it is just a lazy stereotype by BO.
What part of “atrocious beyond human understanding” do you not understand? I wasn’t defending Buchenwald. I was simply pointing out that Auschwitz was even worse, and especially to Jewish people.
I don’t think you were defending Buchenwald. Not at all.
I do think you were intentionally downplaying, or simply ignorant of, the horror in an attempt to make Obama’s gaffe look worse than need be.
it makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know.
How about the number of states we have? 48? 58? whatever!
After teaching a couple of years in Constitutional Law, he said he wasn’t familiar with the Second Amendment.
Obama has so few profound experiences of his own to draw on that its understandable for him to “borrow” stories from others. This is true of most of us. We draw inspiration from other people’s lives, from heroism we see on TV or read about in books or hear about from Mom or our teachers or pastors.
Of course, Obama didn’t see his uncle as heroic; he saw him as a shattered wreck trapped in the attic and in dire need of a government program. If the information posted above is accurate (the Uncle has apparently lived a long life and has enough money to make political donations), the Uncle managed to find a way out of the attic at some point. How? I guess we’ll never know, maybe because it doesn’t serve the victim narrative.
come off it, andy. “Atrocious beyond human understanding” can in no rational way be seen as “intentionally downplaying or simply ignorant of” anything. Even if you win this by some exceeding fine semantic scorecard, you are making a fool of yourself.
Also his great uncle did not enlist the day after Pearl Harbor!!
come off it, andy. “Atrocious beyond human understanding” can in no rational way be seen as “intentionally downplaying or simply ignorant of” anything. Even if you win this by some exceeding fine semantic scorecard, you are making a fool of yourself.
Perhaps you and I view the phrase “merely a slave labor camp” differently.
I’m not even interested in the “we hate Obama” aspect of it, being no friend of his anyway. I simply question how anyone can use the word “merely” in the context of a Nazi camp.
But, hey, you go on believing that Buchenwald was summer camp and, really, in light of Stalin’s crimes against humanity, Hitler’s were merely a drop in the bucket. OK?
Andy, you’re an idiot. You find me a real summer camp that is “atrocious beyond all understanding” and you’ll sound credible. Merely is entirely appropriate given the context. Jesus told his followers to hate their mothers and fathers too, but unlike you they at least understood the relative comparison being made.
“andy,” if you think that “atrocious beyond human understanding” is semantically equivalent to a “summer camp,” it’s hard to know how anyone can have a rational conversation with you.
mcg –
Thank you for your substantive comment and name-calling.
I recommend you look up the meaning of “merely.”
Buchenwald was not simply a slave labor camp, as has been pointed out by others.
Rand –
The use of “summer camp” was clearly hyperbole to mirror the errant use of “merely” in describing Buchenwald as nothing more than a slave labor camp. That this was lost on you makes me wonder why I bother.
Oh for cryin’ jimminy cricket. I’m not even entirely sure who my biological granddad is on either side. My legal granddads served in the Battle of the Bulge on my Dad’s side, and in the Pacific on my Mom’s side. That’s about as much as I can tell you because they never talked about it when they were alive, which was a while ago. What my Dad did in the Air Force he wasn’t allowed to tell me. Should I not ever run for office because I might get the story about the buttons wrong?
It’s amazing that anyone even half-way intelligent bothers to run for office anymore. This kind of nonsense is why we end up with the kinds of candidates we do. I need to dig up a copy of Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’. He had a word for splitting hairs four ways.
My political calculus is easy:
Ron Paul = ideal candidate (because the man gives more than a passing nod to the Constitution)
Bob Barr = not acceptable Libertarian substitute
Ralph Nader = just not my style, man
John McCain = status quo
Hillary Clinton = status quo
Barack Obama = not status quo
Since I apparently can’t vote for my preferred candidate, I have no choice but to vote for the not status quo. We’ve got serious issues to deal with in this country, and what we’re doing right now is not working. Put that in your poll and smoke it.
As W says, this is really sad. I can’t believe it’s even on memeorandum. You all need something else to do with your lives. Could I suggest painting my house? I’ll take bids now.
Rand – The use of “summer camp” was clearly hyperbole to mirror the errant use of “merely” in describing Buchenwald as nothing more than a slave labor camp. That this was lost on you makes me wonder why I bother.
Apparently, the phrase “slave labor camp” is lost on you. Are you familiar with any colors other than black and white?
It is an accurate description of the ongoing nightmare that was Buchenwald. But as bad as it was, it is not as bad as a site for the deliberate extermination of peoples, as Auschwitz and the others I mentioned were.
The phrase “anyone familiar with the history of World War II” assumes a lot. My U.S. history course did all it could to lump in the Americans and Russians as one big happy family that liberated the hell out of Europe and isn’t that grand while downplaying that while the U.S. liberated, the Russians conquered. So I won’t fault Obama for not knowing the Russians liberate Auschwitz.
What rankles here is not that Obama doesn’t know history, but that he doesn’t even seem to know much about those family members who he claims inform his views. Let’s summarize Obama’s statement in the context in which all this came up:
Says Obama, “John McCain thinks he knows what veterans need just because he was a naval aviator and POW, grew up in a military family, was the son and grandson of admirals and has a son in Iraq. Friends, I know a lot more about what our veterans need because… because someone in my family was involved in something unpleasant in World War II and they say he had a real hard time of it and didn’t want to talk about it.”
What’s scary about Obama, though, is not that he’s mixed political opportunism and bad history. What’s scary is the picture he’s painting of how he thinks. It’s Memorial Day, the day we honor those who gave their lives in our country’s cause. He tells us about his great uncle, who helped liberate Buchenwald. So does he tell us how proud he is that a family member helped make a freer, better world, and that he wants to lead the kind of Armed Forces that makes that happen? Does he tell us how fortunate it was that if those people had been brought under the forces of evil that created Buchenwald, the forces of good embodied in America put an end to it? No, he tells us that the whole thing was really rough on his great uncle.
One of the duties of the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces is to send our brave men and women into harm’s way to keep us safe and free, and to carry the load that places on the conscience. Whether you’re a former soldier or not, it’s not a job for sissies. There are hard choices to be made, and to be lived with. How can we count on Obama to make those hard choices in more ambiguous times when he looks, for God’s sake, at the liberation of a Nazi slave camp, and his first thought is not pride that America liberated those people, but shame that we don’t have better government programs for veterans? I’m all for helping veterans; we owe them a lot. But that starts with honoring and respecting the work they’ve done to keep our country free. And I don’t think Obama gets that.
The author’s comments defending his downplaying of Buchenwald is pathetic and deplorable. That’s quite a bit of yourself to sell off to try and make a small political point, Mr. Simberg.
“Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was *merely a slave labor camp*, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. *The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet*. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis.”
Historically inaccurate and moreover morally repugnant. Really? Downplaying the severity of a Nazi concentration camp to take a swipe at a candidate? Take a look at this picture, then take a look at yourself in the mirror, Mr. Simburg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Buchenwald-J-Rouard-10.jpg
Geoff, you are clearly the winner.
When you start rationalizing about whether one camp was worse than another, well, you qualify to paint my house.
How much weight to you give to Salaspils? Was it worse or better than other camps?
I think Andy aptly made the point that Buchenwald was part of the Nazi’s genocide. One aspect of the Holocaust that people find particularly horrifying was its methodical and pre-meditated nature. Using some of the victims as slave labor (under the conditions that Andy illustrated) before killing them (one way or another) was just part of that methodical genocide. Had the Nazis had won (or, more plausibly, had the war had gone on longer), everyone at the labor camps would have been killed, one way or another. “Merely” was an inartful choice of words at best, and offensive at worst, but more importantly, you are making a false distinction.
I think Skyler and Andy got it right.
Rand –
I think if you simply said something like “my use of the word ‘merely’ in reference to Buchenwald as a slave labor camp was in error, a poorly chosen word in the midst of writing a lengthy blog post,” everyone who has taken exception would – whether they believed you or not (and I, for one, would accept you at your word) – let it go.
Instead, you choose the self-righteous path of indignation (don’t feel bad, I did the same from time to time when blogging, much to my dismay these days).
It was NOT “merely a slave labor camp,” as has been pointed out.
Further, I fail to see how running a camp designed to purposefully extract labor, until death, in support of a war machine that was partially dedicated to genocide in other camps, is morally separable from the devoted death camps themselves.
If I make you hold a gun to an innocent man’s head while I squeeze the trigger, am I “merely” a witness to the crime?
Just admit your word choice was poor and move along.
I am – goodnight!
I agree the confusion would not ordinarily be regarded as major. There were differences between Obama’s story and the truth, but each individual miss is the sort that people make all the time.
However.
There were multiple unfacts in the same story,
He is making similar mistakes repeatedly, and
Obama brought it up himself.
I wouldn’t base my presidential vote entirely on the one issue, but it is precisely the sort of thing voters should keep track of.
I think that maybe the point you’ve overlooked is that, while others may have used straight out assassination, your camp in question used slave labor and disease AS A MEANS OF murder. Soaking their heads in acids would not have made the Merely A Hair Salon. Performing horrific medical experiments would not have made them Merely a Bad Surgery Unit. They were Merely an Extermination site, who used labour as a means to an end.
The argument here is embarrassing. People in Europe can read it and see that Americans use something like what happened in WWII so frivolously . . . it’s shameful. . . utterly shameful.
But you are getting hits and God loves capitalists and popular people, no?
@ Geoff
“How can we count on Obama to make those hard choices in more ambiguous times when he looks, for God’s sake, at the liberation of a Nazi slave camp, and his first thought is not pride that America liberated those people, but shame that we don’t have better government programs for veterans? I’m all for helping veterans; we owe them a lot. But that starts with honoring and respecting the work they’ve done to keep our country free.”
That’s the most twisted logic I’ve seen in a while. How you got shame from Obama’s statements is beyond me. What better way to show appreciation to our troops than to recognize how hard their job is, how much they sacrifice, and demanding better treatment for them? It seems like what *you* don’t get is that paying lip service to our previous military accomplishments does nothing to actually help our troops in any substantial way. A different speech may have made you feel warm and fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure our men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would prefer someone honor and respect them by advocating real programs that will help them financially and otherwise when they get home.
The distinction between a slave labor camp and an extermination camp is not false at all. It is one thing, horrific as it is, to use humans as beasts, and then dispose of them when they are useless for such purposes because they have been worked almost literally to death. but it is no new thing in human events. It is another thing entirely to deliberately wipe them out simply because of their ancestry, religion, or sexual orientation.
I’m not sure what to make of people who cannot make such a distinction. Except to think them moral midgets.
The Polish name of Danzig is Gdańsk.
Confusing Auschwitz with Buchenwald, or any of the other 50-odd camps, is not a trivial error. Obama isn’t some 20-year-old fresh out of indoctrination camp (that is, modern liberal-arts college). He’s a middle-aged man who has had plenty of opportunity to read some history. His general ignorance of 20th century affairs is turning out to be quite remarkable.
Personally, I think he’s dumb as a post. His boosters keep telling us how smart he is, but there’s precious little evidence for it.
Rand, who got selected for the slave labor camps? Why were they selected? Jews were sent to the labor camps as part of a genocide. People in other groups were sent to labor camps for the same reason they were sent to extermination camps. If I’m wrong about this, I hope someone will correct me, ideally by using the resources of the US Holocaust Museum.
“It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II,”
Uh, no. He did say he was part of a film crew that shot footage of the camps AFTER they were liberated. This was untrue. I find nothing that suggests Reagan ever told anyone he helped liberate concentration camps.
The problem with the Auschwitz/Buchenwald gaffe, to me, is that if Obama is really “proud” of his uncle’s service, why the hell didn’t he know the truth? This is a stupid mistake and DOES show a tremendous ignorance of what really should be, amongst the educated, an elementary point. But the fact that someone would claim to be proud of their uncle liberating a Nazi camp and not even know which freakin’ camp? Come on – that’s lame. If I could remotely attach myself to one of those men who defeated the Nazis I’d have a shrine in my home. Apparently Obama really isn’t that impressed. Doesn’t that say something about him?
@Simburg
Look all, the man who downplayed the severity of a Nazi concentration camp to make a quick point on his political blog has called us moral midgets. Pot, kettle, black. Some advice Simburg – when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, stop digging.
Andy, I’m frankly not above name calling. What can I say, I’m juvenile. You’re still an idiot.
“Merely” means “and nothing more.” That is, he was saying that Buchenwald was a slave labor camp “and nothing more”; i.e., not an extermination camp like Auschwitz. It is an entirely appropriate construction in context, a context he made quite clear by his further description of it as “”atrocious beyond human understanding.”
That there were significant differences between Buchenwald and Auschwitz is undisputed. Even in the rarified air of unspeakable evil, it is possible to draw comparisons and distinctions. So indeed, you might quibble with the assertion that Buchenwald was a slave labor camp “and nothing more.” FIne. It doesn’t make it a poor word choice, or an attempt to minimize the horrific nature of the camp. And it doesn’t change the fact that extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau earned particular infamy that it does not share.
Moral Midgets? Because we can see that working people to death is MURDERING THEM? Wow.
Andy, I’m frankly not above name calling. What can I say, I’m juvenile. You’re still an idiot.
Well, you’re right about one thing: you ARE juvenile.
“Merely” means “and nothing more.”
Very good, you win a cookie. It was more than a slave labor camp (even my 70+ yr old father can Google with great success, so I wish you the best in your endeavor).
The rest I leave to you and your questioning mind to resolve.
You’re trying to build a case against Obama becoming president based on THIS?
My god, what is wrong with you???
Buzz, Regarding Reagan’s false claim to have visited newly liberated concentration camps, the story is cited in mainstream biographies and is addressed on countless websites. My problem is that I can’t figure out which sources a skeptic like you might find convincing. Here are some sources – I wonder if any of these will satisfy you?
One reference I’ve found comes from Edmund Morris’ “Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan”. I don’t have the text from the book, but wikipedia article on Regan’s presidency says “In 1983, he told prominent Jews � notably Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel, Simon Wiesenthal, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of Los Angeles � of his personal experience vis-�-vis the Holocaust, saying “I was there,” and that he had assisted at the liberation of Nazi death camps. The wikipedia article then cites “Morris, Edmund (1999), p. 113.”
Other references:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2004/08/so-i-guess-john-kerry-has-been-dining.html
(The above reference has the most detail – it extensively quotes “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime”, by Lou Cannon)
Here’s a review of Lou Cannon’s book
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDD1E38F937A15757C0A967958260
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000327/alterman
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,98224,00.html
Jesus, this is pathetic. So the latest right-wing meme is: Obama transposes the names of two notorious concentration camps, thereby proving he is too ignorant to be president. (This is particularly rich when coming from those who’ve spent the last seven-plus years swooning over the greatness of George W. Bush, a man who can barely assemble a coherent sentence… but that’s politics, I suppose.) Surely it’s possible that Obama could possess a modicum of intelligence in spite of not knowing the placement of Nazi prison facilities, even the famous ones.
Meanwhile… the GOP has graced us with a candidate who still can’t distinguish the Sunni from the Shia (you know, the people involved in THE WAR WE’RE ACTUALLY FIGHTING THIS VERY MINUTE), even after getting it repeatedly wrong over the last few months. Won’t somebody (a bright high school student, say) sit McCain down with a pencil and notepad and gently explain the most basic details of Mideast politics?
But you guys keep pushing that “Obama’s too dumb to be president” line, by all means. That’ll go down a treat with the Joe Sixpacks out there come November. Oh well, I suppose it’s less predictable than playing the “Uppity Negro” card…
“Obama didn’t see his uncle as heroic; he saw him as a shattered wreck trapped in the attic . . ..”
Where did he say he didn’t view him as a hero? Or did you just make that up? Most grownups can hold handle the notion that someone who goes through a war can be a hero even if they were injured or suffer from PTSD.
Frankly, if I were a veteran reading this, I would be pretty pissed off at the idea that unless I was totally unaffected by my experiences, I couldn’t be a “hero” in your eyes.