A couple of weeks old (btw, I indeed was shocked by this documentary and the way it was promoted, so I didn't bother to watch it or buy the book it's based upon).
Hat tip Erik Svane at No Pasaran, I missed it at the Transatlantic Intelligencer, my bad.
See also the NP article on it.
By John Rosenthal
On June 6, 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day, French President Jacques Chirac stood before hundreds of American veterans of the Allied invasion of Normandy at the American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer, where their fallen comrades are buried. Chirac pledged to the veterans that France had not forgotten their sacrifices. "To the entire American nation," he said, "...to all those men and women who paid the heavy price of those heroic days, I want to address the message of France: a message of friendship and brotherhood, of recognition and gratitude."
And he continued: "Having experienced the long ordeal of war and occupation, France is aware of all it owes to the United States of America, to the commitment of President Roosevelt, to the actions of General Eisenhower. Each of us, every family in France, cherishes the memory of those moments of joy that followed the D-Day landings."
Next up at the podium was President George W. Bush, who, recounting the course of events 60 years before, added a characteristic touch of levity to the ceremony:
Near the village of Colleville, a young woman on a bicycle raced to her parents' farmhouse. She was worried for their safety. Seeing the shattered windows and partially caved-in roof, Anne Marie Broeckx called for her parents. As they came out of the damaged house, her father shouted, 'My daughter, this is a great day for France.' As it turned out, it was a great day for Anne Marie, as well. The liberating force of D-Day included the young American soldier she would marry, an Army private who was fighting a half a mile away on Omaha Beach. It was another fine moment in Franco-American relations.
The reassuring words of the French head of state and the good cheer of the American chief executive were well-suited to the occasion. But they covered up a grimmer, more troubling reality: namely, a creeping historical revisionism that is part and parcel of the wave of anti-Americanism that has swept across Europe over the last five years. The Europe-wide dissemination of a book titled The Myth of the Good War: America and the Second World War provides some measure of the extent of the phenomenon. It has thus far been translated -- and always with the same title -- into German, English, Spanish, Italian, and French, apart from the original Dutch edition.
Whereas such open revisionism concerning the role of the US in the liberation of Europe has hitherto been largely limited to "leftist" intellectual circles -- as well, of course, as neo-Nazi ones (who on this, like so many other points, are essentially indistinguishable from the former) -- in France it has now decidedly hit the mainstream. On Friday evening, March 24, French public television channel France 3 broadcast an hour-long documentary titled "The Dark Side of the Liberators." Morbidly turning the cheerfulness of George Bush's anecdote to derision, "The Dark Side" is about what it presents as the mass rape of French women by American troops in the aftermath of the Normandy operation. Rapes of English women by American soldiers stationed in the UK prior to the launch and then of German women, following the American crossing of the Rhine, are added into the mix -- seemingly in order to arrive at a more impressive number of cases -- as preamble and coda.
With swing music in the background, and stock footage of the liberation -- the joyous celebrations of GIs and French civilians intermingled -- flashing across the screen, the voice-over begins:
Normandy, June 1944. Filmed by the most famous Hollywood directors..., carefully selected by the cinematographic services of the US Army, these images of the American liberators legitimate a fervor long inscribed in the collective memory. ...One likes these soldiers, one admires them, one adores them. Heroic literature and films have immortalized the idyllic representation of the sons of the world's largest democracy come to liberate Europe from totalitarianism.
Then the music changes, the upbeat swing giving way to an ominous, funereal march. "These images speak the truth," the voice-over allows, "but not the whole truth. "In what follows, "The Dark Side of the Liberators" does its part to dampen the grateful "fervor long inscribed in the collective memory" -- or even to transform it into hate.
The narration talks of "atrocities committed": a formula that would usually imply that the acts in question were sanctioned by the military hierarchy and hence not a matter of simple crimes. A French historian interviewed for the film describes the American troops stationed in Cherbourg tenderly as "a veritable army of termites": "People are fed up. After a while, the French civilians can no longer accept that the Americans act like they're in a conquered land." German women are said to be subject to a "paroxysm of violence" even "exceeding that inflicted on the English and French."
The individual cases discussed are apparently true. They are, after all, based on US court martial records from the time -- a fact that reveals that these are not, after all, a matter of "atrocities" in the usual sense of the term, but rather of crimes that were immediately recognized and prosecuted as such by US military authorities. The records were "uncovered" by an American academic by the name of J. Robert Lilly. Lilly is the hero of "The Dark Side of the Liberators". Among other reasons, this is because he found a French publisher for his book on the subject that no American publisher had been interested in bringing out. He is frequently seen in the film studiously pondering American military files -- a repeated image clearly meant to underscore his scholarly seriousness -- or posing embarrassing questions in a slow, deliberate English to an elderly French woman who gamely admits to having been one of the victims indicated in the records.
But the issue, of course, is why do these sad cases merit such a sensationalized documentary treatment -- the film, in its own terms, tells a "story made of blood, sperm and tears" -- and why precisely now? The number of cases cited is based entirely on Lilly's say-so and his remarks leave no doubt that he is making extrapolations -- based on what calculus, the viewer is not told -- from the actual evidence. Even supposing the figures given -- some 3,500 "crimes" (both rapes and murders) for France and some "17,000 or 18,000" in all -- are not inflated, they are, regrettably, hardly exceptional in the annals of warfare or even in those of WWII.
The narrator darkly repeats the number of 11,500 such crimes for Germany, rendered still more macabre by the fact that the victims are described as "women and children". But only seconds latter -- in an alibi-making flourish with which the film concludes -- she notes that French occupation forces in the single German town of Stuttgart are supposed to have been implicated in more than a thousand rape cases (Btw, I've read about theses, and the troops involved were mostly moroccans from colonial african army) and that the Red Army during the Second World War "was responsible for several hundred thousand" sexual crimes. (The latter number is presumably based on the claims of German filmmaker Helke Sander, whose highly controversial 1992 documentary on alleged crimes of the Red Army in Germany, "Liberators Take Liberties", seems indeed to have been the inspiration for "The Dark Side of the Liberators".) Why not, then, a film on the phenomenon in general?
The narrator also mentions that "the German army" was guilty of "mass rapes" throughout Europe. Curiously, however, unlike for the three Allied nations, no specific numerical estimate or range is given -- as if the inclusion of the crimes of Nazi Germany was an afterthought or a matter of obligation. The very gesture of inserting the Nazi crimes -- and relatively inconspicuously to boot -- among the others, only serves to underscore the revisionist implications of the entire exercise. Were the liberators, then, no better than the conquerors? Maybe worse?
For good measure -- and even though it works somewhat at cross-purposes to the principal charge of the film -- "The Dark Side of the Liberators" manages also to find the opportunity to accuse the American army of racism. It seems that a disproportionate number of black soldiers were implicated in the cases documented in the Army records. Lilly appears to take the documentary evidence at face value. The French directors, however, know better. The anomaly is surely the result of the fact that "the judges, prosecutors, and even the defense attorneys were all white in a culturally racist Army." The brief appearance in the film of a gravestone with the charming epitaph "Killed by the Blacks" ["Tué par les Noirs"] gives rise, however, to no similar interrogations about the attitudes of the local French population.
John Rosenthal's writings on international politics have appeared in Policy Review, the Opinion Journal, Les Temps Modernes and Merkur. He is the editor of the Transatlantic Intelligencer (www.trans-int.com).
#1
It is NOT good military bearing to allow your soldiers to run around raping, pillaging, and plundering (unless you serve with John Kerry). Given we had a couple of million troops in Europe I would not be surprised to see a couple of thousand cases of rape. Using a figure of 2 million troops (I am guessing) and 18,000 rapes that leaves us with a .009% rate of criminal behavior. Yes there were bad people but the VAST majority of those who served did so with honor. This is just a leftist example of trying to find bad in everything good. Liberating Europe was a GOOD thing, bad things happened during that liberation, but the final tally was that Europe is no free.
#2
So basically they are saying "Never rescue us again!"
Deal.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
04/18/2006 11:19 Comments ||
Top||
#3
So basically they are saying "Never rescue us again!"
Nope, what they're saying is : the soldiers who liberated France were muslim (commeration of the Provence landing in 2005, with FLN president bouteflika invited, Algiers being given the medal of the résistance), not the accursed anglo-americans (Vichy term now again in use since GWII), the german soldiers were victims of the nazi regime and France and Germany are friends now (2005 D-day commemoration),... this is rewriting the past to serve present's day anti-americanism, as explained in the text.
But this goes further : Europe's roots are as muslim as they are christian & Spain was originally a muslim country (or so sez Shiraq), WWI was won thanks to muslim troops (Shiraq inaugurated a - big - memorial for muslim soldiers at Verdun recently), the West's present prosperity is due to the work of migrants and to the exploitation of the colonized countries (believe me, THIS has been fully interiorized by the muslim population in Europe), migrants will help replenish our aging populations and pay our retirements (cf that socialist wimman happy in a tv "debate" that 30% of french births come from migrants),...
#4
We have the proof that mass rape never took place. If it had, today's Europeans would be half American, and therefore positive, upbeat, and industrious. They would indeed be a formidable force in business and technology, no doubt leading the world in various endeavors. They would possess a no-nonsence military and administrations who didn't tolerate bombings and riots.
Need more proof than that ?
#7
Normandy, June 1944. Filmed by the most famous Hollywood directors..., carefully selected by the cinematographic services of the US Army, these images of the American liberators legitimate a fervor long inscribed in the collective memory.
Yeah, the brass at the Pentagon [circa 2000] forgot all that. They didn't want to allocate any of their own resources, like their granddads did in WWII, to do the story telling. Ever see those films with the lead in "Approved by the War Office"? They 'contracted' out the work to MSM. Bites doesn't it? In moving slots from billets to bayonets they cut all the combat photogs. Seems they forgot the class back at the Army War College on Clausewitz - War is an extension of politics. Whether you like it or not, you have to play the game or even if you win all the battles at the front, you can lose the war at home.
#13
Once again the Right's 1-2 is undeniably, unconditionally, and absolutely equal or superior to the Left's 8-9 out of 10, ergo the Right and only the Right is the real problem for everyone.
A primer on the media savvy french interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy... by a free-market conservative wary of his all-show/no substance/double speak.
Interesting read if you wish to get an another view of one of the prime contenders for the future french presidential election (2007, or even earlier if Shiraq is as decrepit as it's rumored), who's being "sold" by the msm as a conservative pro-free market atlantist.
#1
Btw, for thoses who understand or speak french, the author of this will be on air in Claude Reichman's talk show on Radio-courtoisie (independent conservative/right wing/free market radio, direct stream here), as he's his regular assistant.
Theses are always very interesting shows.
18-21h, re-aired 02-05h & 07h30-10h30 next day, substract 6 hours for East coast US time.
#2
It seems that by having their politicians and bureaucrats all trained at the polytechnic, it has resulted in politicians ranging in quality between Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry.
I guess the old saying is true: France is a dictatorship punctuated by riot.
#3
According to a non-idiotarian economist named Jacques Marseille and his book "of the good use of civil war in France" (which of course I didn't read, but heard him talk about in Radio-Courtoisie btw), France is only capable of reforming itself through convulsive crisis taking the form of overt of implicit civil wars... and he diagnostic we're in the middle of one, with a paroxysm coming sooner than later (when the counrty will go bankrupt, probably).
Thus your saying is quite true, and, yup, an enema is coming.
Samuel P. Huntingtons The Clash of Civilizations thesis has generated a lot of debate, and some justified criticism. He has been accused of simplification, but also for underestimating the case of Islam. Huntington does talk about the bloody borders of the Islamic world. However, he has also stated that there is nothing implicit in Islamic teachings that has created the current turmoil among Muslims, but rather the huge number of young men, the primary instigators of violence in any culture. This is obviously not the case. If Huntington had read books such as The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew Bostom or Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer, he would have understood that Jihad and aggressive violence have been intimately related to Islam on three continents for 1300 years. Yes, an abundance of young men as cannon fodder for war or demographic Jihad certainly helps, but this situation was created by the contents of Islamic core texts.
Huntington fails to grasp to what extent Islam is a special case, uniquely aggressive among all established cultures and religions on earth today. Hugh Fitzgerald, Vice President of Robert Spencers website Jihad Watch, has explored some of the limitations of the clash of civilizations paradigm. As Fitzgerald points out, it gives the impression that America or the West or Western Christian or Western post-Christian civilization are the enemy, while in reality the global Islamic Jihad is as much directed at Hindus and Buddhists, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, and the non-Muslim black Africans, as it is against the much more powerful, and therefore more dangerous, United States of America:
The phrase clash of civilizations, made famous by Samuel Huntington, is misleading. In Huntingtons formulation, there are the Sinic, the Orthodox, the Hindu, the Islamic, the Western, and so on. And these are all potentially clashing. But this is nonsense. There is only one clash that counts: that of Islam with all of non-Islam. If, in the future, China and America were to go to war, it would not be because the former is Sinic and the latter Christian or Western or some such, but because of perceived Great-Power rivalries for China and America are now part of the same civilization, the shared, modern, universal civilization, with disagreements at the edges, but nothing like the clash between Islam and all Infidels. In fact, a war between China and America would be about power, and thus no different from, for example, the rivalry, ending in war, between Germany and England in the pre-1914 period. It is interesting to note, meanwhile, that Arab and Muslim analysts around the world tend to prefer the phrase clash of civilizations because it avoids the truthful description of the conflict as one motivated by a belief-system, the belief-system of Islam.
However, Samuel P. Huntington should be credited with some of the honor of placing the significance of culture on the radar of global politics. He is also right in pointing out that the beginning of the 21st century is characterized by a West that has superior, yet declining global power. Rival cultures such as the Chinese and the Islamic ones are asserting themselves. The tectonic plates of global power are shifting in ways they havent done for centuries. Maybe future historians will label this age the retreat of the Western world order. I say retreat of because it is not yet certain that this is the end of the Western world order, although that is a possibility. These massive changes and the real or perceived weakness of the Western civilization that has been dominant globally for centuries could very well create a new world war. Multiculturalism and the inability or unwillingness of Western nations to uphold their borders from massive immigration is viewed by Muslims as an invitation for attack and a signal that their ancient Western rival is weak and ripe for conquest. This is no doubt the background for the ongoing aggressive posture by the Iranian president, among others. We should take this dead seriously, because it is meant that way.
Muslims really do believe that the time has now come for overthrowing the West and putting Islam into the global, dominant position it should have according to their scriptures. They will spare no efforts, including nuclear war, in achieving this goal. The Iranian president has quite openly stated that Islam will soon rule the world, which implies that they will have to destroy or subdue the West. Al-Qaeda strategists have earlier outlined a schedule for awakening the Islamic world and crushing the West, with a timeline stretching over the coming fifteen to twenty years. They still stick to this plan, which means that tensions are bound to escalate even further in the near future. Westerners need to understand that a world war of sorts with the Islamic world is already inevitable by now, no matter what we do. The only question is whether this will be a cold or a hot world war. We will rapidly approach the latter, if countries such as Iran are allowed to gain nuclear weapons and continued Muslim immigration pushes Western European nations to the brink of civil war. Iranian nukes need to be prevented at absolutely all costs, if we are to have any chance of avoiding further escalation of the most dangerous kind.
There are many possible scenarios for the first half of the 21st century. Let us have a look at some of them:
1. Another Atlantic/Western century
The intra-Western, Atlantic ties between Europe and North America will still be the most important and defining global axis. This would require that Europe regains her old, cultural and religious dynamic and repels Islam. Just as Islam isnt the cause of Europes current weakness, but rather a secondary infection, it could have the unforeseen and ironic effect of saving Europe from herself. By quite literally putting a dagger at Europes throat, the Islamic world will force Europeans to renew themselves or die. Europe will go through a turbulent period of painful, but necessary revival, and will arrive chastened on the other side. Although not impossible, this is probably not the most likely scenario at this point, given the economic and cultural weakness of Europe in particular. The West as a whole also makes up a declining proportion of the worlds population, and globalization makes it more difficult for the West to retain its technological superiority.
2. Another American century
The USA, more than Europe and Asia, will remain the worlds unchallenged superpower. The 21st century will be a continuation of the American Age that started in the 20th century. Europe may foster the strength to repel Islam, but not enough to renew herself, and will fade off the world stage. Alternatively, Islamic-controlled Eurabia emerges triumphant, or the entire continent becomes a nightmare of civil wars where neither side gains a decisive victory. In both cases, Europe will be a source of constant instability. The rise of the Asian economies will be derailed by internal political and cultural problems, or could trigger nationalistic rivalries and devastating intra-Asian wars similar to WW1 in Europe.
3. The Asian/Chinese century
The world will return to the Asia-centric system we had before the rise of Europe and the West. Multiculturalism and uncontrolled mass-immigration destroy the internal cohesion of the decadent West, which will slowly fall apart as it has lost the will to defend itself and the belief in its own culture. The wars in the Balkans in the 1990s will in hindsight be seen as a prelude to the Multicultural World War. Just as Imperialism caused WW1, Fascism WW2 and Communism the Cold War, Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration will drag the West into a war with the Islamic world. Instead of a Westernization of the Balkans, we get a Balkanization of the West. Will this be a world dominated by China, or by Asia as a whole, including India? Perhaps India and Southeast Asia will be bogged down by instability caused by Muslims. The Chinese will watch from the sidelines, quietly playing both sides against the middle as the West and the Islamic world destroy each other. In the end, China will reign supreme as the last man standing.
4. The Pacific century
The USA may remain the worlds leading power, but Europe fades off the global scene and leaves her spot open for Asia. Global affairs will be shaped by the twin pillars of the USA and Asia, mainly China, who will cooperate to contain Islamic extremism, a kind of Global Infidel Alliance. Europe will be the worlds largest open-air museum. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Parliament in England as well as many other landmarks will have been lost during the Eurabian civil wars to expel Islam from Europe. They now exist only as plastic souvenirs that Europeans sell to American and Asian tourists to scrape out a living. These authentic European souvenirs will all be made in China, of course.
5. The Anglosphere - Indian century
I believe this is what has been predicted by writer Mark Steyn, among others. The USA and the UK, the major powers of the previous 3 centuries, will be at the centre of this one, too. But they will share the spot with India and some other countries such as Japan, honorary members of the Anglosphere. US President Bush has already adopted a policy designed to draw India closer to the United States in a strategic alliance. Perhaps this will be in the shape of a Democratic Union or Democratic Infidel Alliance, which may include parts of Free Europe depending upon the Islamic situation there. This alliance will be suspicious of authoritarian China, and will have hostile relations with the Islamic world.
6. The Global Civil War - Neo-Barbarism and Chaos
The darkest scenario of all. Islam manages to derail the West, both Europe and later North America. This disrupts global trade, and the ripples create unrest even in other parts of the world not directly involved in the fighting, including East Asia and Latin America. India will be drawn directly into the conflict with Islam, as will Russia and Israel. The chaos forces created by Islam and by global mass migration by hundreds of millions of people will erode state power virtually everywhere. Perhaps this trend will be reinforced by the appearance of a new, lethal virus, which will quickly spread to all regions of the world thanks to technological globalization. All of this will create a Global Civil War, the first of its kind in human history. It will disrupt civilization, be that Eastern or Western, for generations to come.
#2
I also tend toward #6. Although my reasoning is different to the authors, or rather there is an additional factor that almost no one takes into consideration.
Globalization has created massive economic interdependence. Almost all the economic activity in the world depends to a greater or lesser on trade with other countries. Interrupt that flow of trade and it would be an enormous economic shock. There is nothing comparable in history.
The problem is not trade per se, but trade with places outside your political control. Were the shock to occur, the solution is to bring the places you depend on under your political control, i.e. invade them.
#4
Be it Secular- andor Faith-based Totalitarianism, Centralism, and Scientifism, the glitch for both Lefty Secularists and Radical Islam, i.e. Faith/God-based-Socialists, is that any innovation is viewed as an illegal-immoral reaction and challenge to the status quo or traditional order. This is why conquering and suborning America + Western democracies + World is at best a temporary solution to Global Socialists in any form. For the PC Left, the WOT is a "Clash of Ideologies" disguised as a "Clash of Civilizations" - for Radical Islam, is the opposite i.e. Tony Blair's "Clash of [about] Civilization" disguised as a "Clash of Ideologies". The final agenda for both camps entails the de facto defeat or destruction of the hyper-power USA, and upon thence the voluntary or forced imposition of either a post-USA Global Secular Socialist State, or a Global Faith-based Socialist = Theocratic Islamist/Jihadist State. Secularism would be absolute and eternal, as would Jihadism. Iff not per se destroyed, the USA under any form of Socialist OWG and World Order would just be a weak, anti-sovereign regional nation or global province amongst many others. THe CHILDREN FEED THE MOTHER, THE MANY FEED THE FEW, THE SLAVES-PEONS FEED THE HORDE - eeeeeerrrrrrr, meant GOVERNING-RULING WORLD COUNCIL OR PARTY. To no one's surprise, or shouldn't be, and be it the Commies or Radical intellectuals, 200 Milyuhn or more Americans = 5.8Bilyuhn of world's 6.0+Bilyuhn = 90%-plus of world's population have been deemed by the Rampaging Bandit-Barbarian Horde as unnecessary economic/production units whom have to be voluntarily or forcibly removed from the lists and from available inventory. Some extremists are arguing for a world population as low as 500,000 -thusly, within the narrow scope of Amer and global holocaust, the GWOT is also a war to see whom gets to be one of the lucky few who gets to temporarily survive a while longer than most, at least until the next rampage or real-time SURVIVOR TV show.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
