While Russian forces invade Georgia...

[fpb]

...the silver and bronze medallists of one of the Olympic gun competitions not only shook hands, but hugged and did everything in their power to demonstrate the deepest love for each other. The silver medalist was Russian, the bronze Georgian. The BBC commentators were all over this like white on rice, calling it a wonderful display of the power of sports to bring people together.

I find it revolting.

The proper word for it is collaborationist. It is, traitorous. It is, quisling. Sorry, but if your troops have just invaded my country and killed hundreds if not thousands of my people, I will NOT shake your hand and I will NOT act as your friend. There are too many dead between us. I hope the Georgian woman is chased out of her country by popular rage.

Comments

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

You know where I live. In a country which has never declared war, but is constantly being dragged into other people's conflicts by our treaty obligations. With an army that as near as we can tell has never violated the rules of war. With a third of population being immigrants (not their descendants, but actual immigrants) from countries who hate each other intensely.
We could, quite easily, devolve into civil war. Instead, Turks and Greeks live side by side, as to Serbs and Croats, Vietnamese and Chinese. While at university, I was bemused to see that the Jewish and Islamic groups thought the world of each other.
We know how to live in peace.

Here's a tale you won't have heard - even if you've read some Australian history - it's not touted as it can be seen as racist.

Okay, you may know that during WWII, Australia (like Canada) received POWs taken from all of the Axis powers. The largest internment camp was at a town called Cowra - my father's family had been sent there by the bank. You may even have heard of the Cowra Outbreak - "The Night of a Thousand Suicides". If you haven't: the Japanese prisoners (over a thousand, obviously) managed a mass breakout. A thousand soldiers from the army that routinely shot captured nurses, who had covered prisoners in gasoline and burned them to death.
The only soldiers we had within hundreds of miles were the surviving guards from the camp, a handful of militia (my grandfather was one of them) and some raw recruits who didn't know one end of a rifle from the other.
My father's earliest memory is of being in a darkened room, the outside light on, and his mother sitting calmly in a chair with a rifle across her lap. The house was on the edge of town - the edge closest to the camp.

Okay, no surprises. But what isn't widely known is how the German and Italian troops reacted.
Their officers presented themselves to the camp commander the following morning, and announced that they and every soldier under them was forthwith giving their parole: there would be no escape attempts until the crisis was over. This was of course, gratefully accepted. Then they dropped the bombshell: to defend the civilians, they offered their services to assist in the hunt and round up of the Japanese. They realised that they would not be issued to weapons, but were prepared to accompany Australian troops *unarmed*, acting as scouts, drivers and so on.
They knew that it was a death sentence for many of them, but that was beside the point.

The Australian commander considered the matter, and said that no, it was too dangerous.
So he issued them with weapons.

They didn't, to my knowledge, ever engage the Japanese. They'd signed up to protect civilians, so were largely used to protect locations rather than search (besides, locals seeing armed Axis troops moving around might shoot before asking questions).
The Japanese, however, didn't attack civilians. They did go hunting Australian troops of course, quite rightly so. But civilians?
One frightened farm wife heard hammering on the door, and a Japanese voice telling her to stay inside, and that she *must* make sure that none of her children went into the barn - cryptically adding that he had children of his own. She didn't leave the house until our troops arrived, and told them what he'd said. They investigated the barn, to find that 3 Japanese soldiers had committed suicide there. He spoke to her because he hadn't wanted the children to see such a horrible sight. There are stories like that from all around the Cowra countryside. That's why the town has a massive memorial to the POWs.
Italians, Germans, Japanese - all covered themselves in glory over those days.
That's what happens - here on the Moon. Like it or not, the heroic actions of those Italian troops is part of your homeland's military heritage: something you are called to live up to.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So the racism of Italian Fascists and German Nazis towards their own Japanese allies means something to you? It means nothing to me. It is exactly what is to be expected by creatures so convinced of their own racial superiority. I am surprised that you should take them as role models.

At any rate, all of this is bullshit. The Second World War took place seventy years ago. The war of Chechenya is taking place NOW, and so are Russian war crimes. End of story.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

The reason the story is not regularly told is because the 'racist' slur always comes up. Never mind that they were defending aborigines as well.

Still, I'm glad that you are prepared to concede that examples from seventy years ago are 'bullshit'. If you're willing to extend that to your example from two centuries ago, then that would be better still.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If there is continuity between 200 years ago and now (such as Russians committing war crimes regularly and Russians being dominated by a corrupt tyranny), then it is not bullshit to recall what they have done, not only seventy years ago, but sixty years ago, ninety years ago, a hundred and thirty years ago, two, three, four hundred years, and throughout their history. However, if there is no continuity, then to invoke what the adventitious tyranny of the adventurer Mussolini did in the service of his masters in Berlin is not only irrelevant but insulting. You are trying to argue as though this monster, who destroyed Italy's original constitution, perverted its liberal institutions, stole its citizens' freedoms, and finally sold them into bondage to their worst enemy, were something organic to Italian history down the ages. If you read up about the Yugoslav testimonies to Italian war crimes, you would find that the Yugoslavs themselves were not only horrified but bewildered at what the Fascists were doing; that while they had good, long, solid reason to expect this kind of thing from Turks, they would never have expected "civilized Italy" (I am quoting one Yugoslav witness' contemporary war diary) to behave so very like Turks, Throughout their unhappy history of Turkish invasion, threat and tyranny, the South Slavs not only of Croatia but even of Serbia had looked to Italy, specifically to Venice, not only for support and a place to escape, but also for a model of civic and polite living. Many Italian terms, such as corso for a town's main road (a significant institution both in old Italy and in Yugoslavia), went straight into Serbo-Croat and are still there. So you are still and again and always trying to associate me and my country with a tyranny that perverted everything Italy had ever stood for and that we rejected, and with a traitorous tyrant who sold us to the Nazis and whom we hung up by his feet. You really are incapable of learning, aren't you?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I suppose he means that since they were at war, it was a legitimate thing to do. How it agrees with the rest of what passes for his argument I cannot begin to imagine.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

It's not good that they were attacked, but it was the duty of the Japanese soldiers to do so, just as it was their duty to escape in the first place. They were doing the right thing, and deserve respect for that. Hating them for doing their duty would be wrong.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which means that the Nazi and Fascist officers who shared in the townsfolk's belief that the Japanese would rape white women and children and massacre civilians were not only sharing in a racist delusion, but also, from your viewpoint, failing in their duty and betraying those who were busy doing it. Are you even capable of noticing when you shoot yourself in the foot?