DADvocate

Barack middle name Obama recently completed a visit to several nations including Germany, France and Great Britain. In one of his first speeches upon returning he states, "There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for,..." Later in the same speech Obama says, "I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged,..."

It seems that to liberals/progressives only the "sad and difficult things" are visible. Instapundit asked the question: "Does Barack Obama think that American history is unusually “tragic” as compared to the history of other great nations?" I decide to expand on this. Roger Kimball beat me to it. Probably because he has more time to devote to blogging than I.

A person even remotely aware of world history over the past 100 years of the mass killings by countries such as Germany, the old USSR, China and many smaller nations, African tribes, and in Arab lands. All told we are probably speaking of hundreds of millions.

In total, this century's battle killed in all its international and domestic wars, revolutions, and violent conflicts is so far about 35,654,000.

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From 1918 to 1953, the Soviet government executed, slaughtered, starved, beat or tortured to death, or otherwise killed 39,500,000 of its own people (the best estimate among figures ranging from a minimum of twenty million killed by Stalin to a total over the whole communist period of eighty-three million). For China under Mao Tse-tung, the communist government eliminated, as an average figure between estimates, 45,000,000 Chinese. The number killed for just these two nations is about 84,500,000 human beings, or a lethality of 252 percent more than both World Wars together

Source

Did Barack middle name Obama make in mention while in Germany of the "the tragic elements" in Germany's history? Attacking other nations and leading to WWI and WWII which lead to the deaths of tens of millions? The genocidal murders committed against Jews? Facts so well know they are not questioned by any reasonable person in the world.

In France did Barack middle name Obama mention France's long colonial history and the French's exploitation and oppression of colonial lands. Did Obama mention Sarkozy's refusal to apologize for atrocities committed in Algeria? Of course not, it may have threatened his rock star status.

Did Barack middle name Obama challenge the British for having established slavery in North America, or for the oppression of nations under the British Empire? Remember "The sun never sets on the British Empire?" Britain only returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. I have an old t-shirt commemorating the event. And, don't forget the British treatment of the Irish which spurred massive immigration to the United States and a century before inspired Johnathan Swift to write "A Modest Proposal."

You don't have to look far to see the "tragic history" of many nations. Italy and fascism. Or, go back to the Roman Empire and Italy's oppression of entire western civilization. Reaching into America's distant past makes no difference to the American hating liberals.

Look at Spain, the Spanish Inquisition, the plundering of lands in the New World. Even tiny Belgium has a checkered past.

Yet Belgium's pride in its colonial past has always been shadowed by a darker history, one marked by two decades of perhaps the cruelest rule ever inflicted on a colonized people and, half-century later, by a violent intervention in Congolese politics after the country's independence in 1960. This history, long buried, neither taught in schools nor mentioned in public, is now beginning to surface.

Indeed, in the scope of history, the United States may be the most humane powerful nation ever. Like every person striving to become smarter, stronger, more successful, etc, the U.S. should continually work to become better. But, I'm tired of all the crap of all the "very sad and difficult things to account for" coming from the lips of liberals/progressives.

Where would the world be today had the U.S. not been there to fight fascism, communism, and to lead the world in virtually every technological, scientific area? Despite whatever faults she may have, one can rightfully argue that the U.S. is the greatest nation ever. And I won't vote for a politician who says or implies otherwise.