Posted on 05/12/2005 1:13:16 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
On a reviewing stand next to Lenin's tomb, President Bush watched as goose-stepping Russian soldiers paraded by with their hammer and sickle flags. It was a surreal moment. The threat of Communism was for many decades the defining geopolitical reality of our times.
The Cold War, the Iron Curtain, the gulags, show trials, re-education camps, the specter of nuclear annihilation, duck and cover drills at school and bomb shelters were all part of it. So were our military struggles in Korea and Vietnam, in which we lost more than 54,000 and 58,000 U.S. soldiers, respectively.
Communism would bury us, the Soviet dictator haughtily proclaimed. We and other nations responded with increasingly powerful arsenals. Maintaining the strongest possible military preparedness wasn't cheap, but our very existence was in jeopardy.
Mr. Bush was in Moscow for celebrations commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Allies defeating Nazi Germany. Victory over the Nazis was indispensable. They were led by a depraved monster whose crimes against humanity will never be forgotten.
That's as it should be. Schools still teach about the estimated six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. They educate children in the despotic evil of Nazism.
At the same time, it should also be remembered that Hitler, with an estimated ten million deaths attributed to him, wasn't the biggest killer of the 20th Century. He didn't even rank second.
China's Mao Zedong and Russia's Joseph Stalin are the greatest mass murderers in history. They weren't, like Hitler and his Nazis, national socialists. No, they were international socialists supposedly devoted to human liberation but in fact dedicated to the extermination of anyone deviating an iota from the often changing party line.
The authoritative "Black Book of Communism — Crimes, Terror and Repression" provides the following estimates:
USSR — 20 million deathsChina — 65 million deaths
Vietnam — 1 million
North Korea — 2 million deaths
Cambodia — 2 million deaths
Eastern Europe — 1 million deaths
Latin America — 150,000 deaths
Africa — 1.7 million deaths
Afghanistan — 1.5 million deaths
Man-made famines and slave labor camp confinements were common causes of death, with Lenin and Stalin killing millions that way. In Chairman Mao's China, some people were reduced to cannibalism. Other methods used by Communist tyrants were hanging, poisoning, gassing, drowning and that old standby, firing squads.
I'm glad that President Bush linked his visit to Moscow with one to Latvia. That country, along with Lithuania and Estonia, was given to Stalin, courtesy of President Franklin Roosevelt, immediately after the war. They suffered under the yoke of Soviet domination for such a long time.
Lithuania's president outlined for the Associated Press Television News the grim reality: "We are happy that the Second World War is over on May 8, but May 9 is the beginning of 50 years of slavery." Mr. Bush rightly called what happened to the Baltic nations one of the greatest wrongs of history. For millions of people around the world and since its very inception, Communism has meant only slavery, deprivation and death for the masses.
The horrors of Communism are largely overlooked. It has failed miserably everywhere it's been established, but that isn't mentioned very often.
Self-styled intellectuals at colleges and universities never tire of explaining that Communism itself is not at fault, the problem is it's never really been tried. Posters and T-shirts emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, who helped run Castro's firing squads, are sold by capitalists who very likely would have been targeted by firing squads if they tried to operate in Cuba.
So while Nazis are roundly and fittingly condemned, Communists are often seen as simply injudicious romantics who simply made a mistake or two. Or more accurately, about 100 million if you want to count their homicidal rampages.
Communism's victims merit more than a shrug and a yawn. As we recall the defeat of the Nazis, let's keep in mind that they represented just one of mankind's two supreme evils. The other still exists, and continues its ruthless legacy, in countries like China and Cuba.
I believe these countries were already occupied by the Red Army when FDR recognized them as part of the Soviet sphere of influence.
FDR never "had them," so he couldn't "give" them to Stalin.
However, he didn't have to recognize the Soviet occupation as legitimate.
Who, in one of history's supreme ironies, are almost exclusively ex-Communists.
He was more concerned with Stalin's cooperation in a "Global New Deal" and the creation of the United Nations to enforce this international socialist vision.
That's ridiculous. The communist party is the second biggest in Russia. They are the same as our democrats. They will likely be voted back into power one day soon.
COMMUNISM WAS/IS WORSE THAN NAZISM.
Nazis blamed "inferior races" for all the world's problems. If you lived in Nazi Germany and were unfortunate enough to be of an "inferior race", you knew would eventually be targeted for extermination and you could either accept your fate or get out of the country.
Communists, OTOH, blame pariah "classes" for all the world's problems. The problem with that distinction is that it is completely arbitrary. On any given day, the Father of the Peoples could decide that you are a member of a pariah class, i.e. an "enemy of the people", and have you thrown in a camp or executed. Every citizen of the Soviet Union (even Stalin's closest confidants) was a potential target.
Such arbitrary, capricious, and random TERROR visited on an ENTIRE NATION was the apotheosis of evil.
It is ridiculous. It is also true. The irony is exceeded only by the billionaire capitalists of China, a country that still claims to be Communist.
And, to be fair, with Soviet cooperation in the war against Japan and various other issues.
Well another SOON to be addition to the list if the left have there way.... America: 30 Million
Under Public Law 103-199, our Foundation has been authorized to design, construct and maintain an international Memorial to the more than 100 million victims of communism. For the past 18 months, we have appeared before federal and city commissions seeking approval of a site for our Memorial.
We now report, with a sense of pride and elation, that we have received official approval of a wonderful Capitol Hill site for our Memorial at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., New Jersey Avenue, N.W., and G Street, N.W. Our site is across from the Georgetown University Law Center and only two blocks from Union Station and the Metro.
There is a clear view of the U.S. Capitol, topped by the famous Statue of Freedom. An unobstructed view of the Capitol was a top priority because at the heart of our Memorial is a 10-foot bronze replica of the "Democracy" statue erected by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and based on our own Statue of Liberty.
Which is worse?
A. Killing 6 million people because they are members of a "race" you believe is inferior and inimical to yours.
B. Killing 6 million people more or less arbitrarily selected from the population and designated as "enemies of the people."
The general consensus is that A is worse than B. It gets classified as "genocide," and is considered the ultimate evil.
We don't even have a special word for B, indicating that it is, in many people's mind, not that big a deal.
Yeah we got plenty of help from the Soviets in Japan. They declared war on Japan right after we dropped the big one. Thanks for all the help comrades. We should have nuked Moscow next.
I didn't say they were a great help. I said we thought we needed their help. At Yalta nobody knew whether the bomb would work or not. Anybody who bases diplomacy on weapons that haven't been tested yet is really an idiot.
And the people of Eastern Europe paid too much for that help.
It's like hate crimes laws. If you assault someone because of hatred, it carries a greater penalty than if you are just trying to rob someone, implying that theft is really not so bad.
i say 6 million is 6 million anyway you slice it and just as bad if not worse than genocide due to the reasons the man before you Listed...But in schools today people are not taught about Stalin so theyll forget....Only how bad a man hitler was i had to bring up stalin in class some years ago to even get him some discussion, well if you want to hear something REALLY BAD i can tell you something I am 18 in Highschool on verge of graduation and was in Study hall one day and Some girl asked the teacher mind you shes a sophmore not a kindergardener "WHOS HITLER???" and STALIN???? forgetabout it no one here knows of him....BUT when go to far right like insane Nazism it resembles insane communism and if you become too much of an insane Commie then you begin to resemble a insane Nazi well thats how i look at it ...like a wheel but i maybe wrong....alot of Insanes Eh...
We also gave them part of Japan for doing nothing. They're still fighting over it today.
We need a real, no-punches-pulled, Mel-Gibson-style movie about the horrors of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, none of our fellow-traveler American movie makers would be interested. Maybe Mel would consider it?
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