More from Ralph Peters

Pure and Undiluted Genius, Freitag, 16. Mai 2003, 00:03 (vor 7862 Tagen)

CROCODILE TEARS
New York Post | 3/10/03 | RALPH PETERS

I SPENT last month in Africa, pausing for a
respectful visit to Robben Island, the former
prison that confined Nelson Mandela for two
decades. It was aphysically beautiful setting
spoiled by humankind´s past intolerance and by the
crocodile tears of European tourists.

Young and old, the German, French and Dutch
visitors deplored what had been done to one of the
great men of the last century - who remains a
powerful, if aging and erratic, voice in the cause
of freedom. I certainly shared their regret at the
suffering imposed on Mr. Mandela and his comrades.

But I wanted to smack the lot of them and yell,
"What about the Iraqis? Don´t they matter, you
smug, little hypocrites?"

As deplorable as conditions were on Robben Island
during the imprisonment of South Africa´s
champions of freedom, they were civilized compared
to the treatment of uncounted thousands of Iraqis
at the hands of Saddam and his henchmen.

I do not underestimate the crimes of the apartheid
regime. Yet, despicable though that government
was, it didn´t use nerve gas on thousands of men,
women and children, torture children in front of
their parents, rape wives infront of their
husbands, exterminate entire families and clans on
a whim, or slaughter minority populations.

Those Euro-trash tourists were right to mourn what
had been done. But why on earth didn´t they care
about the present sufferings of their fellow human
beings?
The sorry truth is that Europeans love to cry over
corpses, but won´t lift a finger to prevent the
killing in the first place. They shake their heads
over the Holocaust, though their parents were
happy enough to pack the local Jews offto
Auschwitz.

The French grudgingly accept that their
intellectuals defended Stalin long after evidence
of his crimes came to light, but they avoid the
issue of how many of their thinkers and artists
admired Hitler and profited from the Occupation
(French cafes and cabarets boomed under the
Nazis).

Was there ever an African dictator the French
didn´t adore? The Dutch criticize America´s
military as trigger-happy, but their own troops
didn´t fire a shot in defense of the Muslims of
Srebrenica, who they had been tasked to protect
and whose slaughter was the worst single massacre
on European soil since the end of the Second World
War.

When I served in Europe in the ´70s, Chairman Mao
prefigured Viagra in his effect upon the European
Left. Of course, the Soviet Union remained noble
and virtuous until the end, its failure to
construct heaven on earth explained away by
American scheming and malevolence. Today,
Europeans dismiss their historical guilt toward
Jews by insisting that Israel is as bad as Nazi
Germany -a Big Lie worthy of Hitler and Goebbels -
while cheering on Israel´s genocidal enemies.