Ted Rall: Collective Punishment Isn't Self-Defense

By Ted Rall
Thu Jul 20, 6:02 PM ET

Collective Punishment Isn't Self-Defense

SAN DIEGO--As commander of a Nazi einsatzgruppen death squad in occupied Poland, Dr. Werner Best came to believe that the most effective response to terrorism was collective punishment. After the fall of France he went on to draft the Third Reich's counterterrorism policy for countries occupied by Germany. Towns where acts of "passive" resistance such as the cutting of telegraph cables had taken place were placed under curfews, fined and slapped with travel restrictions. "Active" resistance--the killing of a German soldier--would be met by reprisal killings of local civilians.

Dr. Best was trying to protect German troops. Rather than be cowed, however, leaders of European resistance groups saw Best's ruthless policy as their chance to radicalize moderates who were still on the fence about their German occupatiers. The insurgents stepped up assassinations of German troops. The killings prompted the Germans to shoot more local businessmen and political leaders. The cycle of violence was spiraling out of control.

Eventually Hitler himself got into the act. Convinced that collective punishment was failing because it wasn't severe enough, the führer issued a September 1941 order to use "the harshest measures" against civilians in areas where the Resistance was active. Arguing that "only the death penalty can be a real means of deterrence," Hitler ordered that 50 civilians be executed for each German soldier killed.

Some in the German high command argued that punishing innocent civilians in large numbers would alienate the local population and lose the battle for hearts and minds. Although they were eventually proven correct, they were overruled. New reprisals, each worse than the last, strengthened the resolve of the resistance and gained them new recruits. By the end of the war, reprisals had assumed grotesquely lopsided ratios of murdered locals to dead Germans. Entire villages--Lidice in the Czech Republic (340 killed), Oradour-sur-Glane in France (642), Kortelisy in Ukraine (2,892)--were wiped out
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20060720/cm_ucru/actinglikenazis

The wrap-up paragraph, IMO, says it all:

Nothing prevents a nation from defending itself or going after those who commit heinous crimes--which include kidnapping--against its citizens. Understanding the difference between self-defense and collective punishment is what separates Israel and the U.S.--on paper, anyway--from the Nazis.

controversy that's for sure. I just finished a book about the SS Einsatzgruppen titled "Masters of Death" by RIchard Rhodes (pulitizer prize winner). It was one of the more difficult books to read (graphic, horrific detail of pure evil) and all through it were examples of Nazi "collective punishment".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375708227/sr=1-1/qid=1153605497/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7317459-4928923?ie=UTF8&s=books

Always like Ted Rall

Bush’s Napoleon Complex

What the French experience in Spain could teach us about Iraq

No two wars are ever the same any more than you can step on the same banana peel twice. That said, Napoleon’s invasion and occupation of Spain, from 1808 to 1814—the war that gave us the word “guerrilla” and was immortalized in Goya’s “Third of May,” the war that drained France’s army, smashed Napoleon’s reputation for invincibility, and left Spain thrashing like a broken-backed snake for decades—has striking similarities to our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Both wars started under the influence of similar delusions. Napoleon thought that the Spanish would roll over and play dead as so many other European states had; he thought marching to Madrid and placing his brother Joseph on the throne would complete the subjugation of Spain. We pretty much thought the same: crushing Saddam’s army would be easy; we would then install a pro-American government (Ahmad the Thief) and have most of our Army home by fall.

The invasions went well, as expected, but in each case a tiresome guerrilla war broke out. The French eventually lost over a quarter of a million men in “the Spanish ulcer,” as Napoleon called it, while Iraq has tied down half of the Army and is costing us more than $75 billion a year. What went wrong? As it turns out, Boney and Bush made some of the same mistakes.

Despite his tremendous organizational skills, Napoleon never managed to establish authority in Spain. He smashed the Bourbon state without ever being able to replace it with his own. We’ve done the same in Iraq. We have been much more systematic about it, sacking the Iraqi army and banning most of the top layer of Ba’athist civil servants from government employment. The French made their mistakes rather casually: “Who wouldn’t want to have my big brother as king?” Napoleon seems to have thought. On the other hand, our administration seems to have tried to fail, going out of its way to alienate and radicalize the entire Iraqi ruling class.

http://amconmag.com/2005_03_28/article.html