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Posted on 10/21/2011 5:09:44 PM PDT by naturalman1975
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Having done some reading on this case, I would have had Morant executed as he later killed a Pastor who was a witness to the original shooting of prisoners.
And people should realize that the Boers War was a lot like the Iraq War where they would kill much like today’s terrorists and then blend back in to the country. Morant’s close friend and commanding officer was captured, tortured and killed and mutilated so we can understand some of his rage.
Also, we should remember the Boers many times did not wear uniforms or wore uniforms that took off dead British soldiers. As someone else mentioned, the British solution was to introduce to the world the “concentration camp” where the Boer women and children were herded and mistreated, starved, denied medicines, and generally left to die. It was a shitty war any war you looked at it.
“....but the aroma *uhh* that was the failure.”
You really expect anyone to contrast that favorably against 70 to 163 Indians at Sand Creek, and 150 at Wounded Knee?
There's a discrepancy of roughly 27,600 victims!
It's about 99 Times as many!
You do realize that most of the Huguenots went to Scandinavia, Central Europe and America. A smaller number went to South Africa. Did you imagine Americans would forget that? We know who you killed and how you did it.
I’m surprised you never expressed any wonderment about why the USA stayed neutral in WWI for so terribly long. Today there are still many Americans convinced we were wrong for entering that war at all, particularly on the side we did.
Except, he and Handcock were both found not guilty of that particular crime. They were charged with the murder of Reverend Hesse, but there was absolutely no proof that either of them were involved. It isn't impossible - somebody obviously shot him - but he was riding through a war zone and the only reason his body was found was because Morant ordered a search after he was reported missing.
“It’s a new kind of war, George. A new war for a new century. I suppose this is the first time the enemy hasn’t been in uniform. They’re farmers. They come from small villages, and they shoot at from behind walls and from farmhouses. Some of them are women, some of them are children, and some of them... are missionaries, George.”
Now you’ve done it, made me want to go and watch that movie again.
“Shoot straight you bastards, don’t make a mess of it.”
And wan’t the murder of the German preacher Reverend Hesse treated as an international incident by the Deutsche Kaiserreich whose diplomatic pressures led directly to the executions of Lieutenants Morant and Handcock?
The Boer War was among the ugliest of wars and the British forces whose ranks included soldiers of all the Dominions did what they had to do to fight and survive. Tragically, the German reverend was seen by them as a spy.
I say this as Jan Christiaan Smuts is one of my childhood heroes to this day and that the Union of South Africa was not the worst thing to happen to that unhappy continent.
Meanwhile let Morant and Handcock rest in peace with their names cleared for all posterity.
What do you do with a Boer taken in looted khaki?
What do you do with a holocaust survivor struggling up a Palestinian beach?
What do you do with an Iraqi driving an over-loaded pickup?
At his later court-martial, it was proved that Morant himself had shot Heese in an effort to prevent him from disclosing the murder of the Boer prisoners-of-war, which would be alarming considering he was acquitted of this crime at that court-martial.
The concentration camp was not invented by the British, again another myth.
The very word is an Anglicisation of the Spanish ‘recontrados’, the Spanish invented the concentration camp in Cuba. And the early camps were a million miles from the Nazi camps and the Gulags.
What happened to the Boer women and children in the camps should never have happened, but it was not deliberate.
1—Again, what happened was appalling and should never have happened, but the idea it was deliberate is a nonsense.
My point re Sand Creek et al is not a numbers game, it is rather obviously a point about having a morally superior attitude with no basis for having one.
2—A sizeable number of Huguenots settled in Britain as well, from London to Northern Ireland.
The Boers were not mistreated, denied anything, allowed to die. They were not starved.
They died because they contracted typhus, had no resistance to it due to age and genes, and that the British military did an appalling job of running the camps.
Regarding whether it was "deliberate" all we need to do is refer to OTHER situations where large numbers of civilians were relocated from their homes to prison barges and primitive encampments.
That happened to the Acadian settlers of what is now Nova Scotia.It also made their menfolk very angry. It is amazing that anyone was ever able to bring about any sort of peace after the Brits sent in nearly half a million troops to kill 26,000 women and children.
Really ~ it was overkill and it was intentional.
What's your beef - too many relatives died fighting in field grey, maybe?
Hmm ~ I’m not anti-UK. You folks have your place in the world. Unfortunately it has usually been ON THE OTHER SIDE.
Been a very long time since we’ve discussed UK and genocide. So what makes you think I’m flaming. What is is. It happened. Get over it.
He's really yanked your chain a few times hasn't he.
Well, enough on that ~ what you are up against in this is very simple ~ I've done my homework to track down the source of the antipathy so many in the family have for the English. It starts roughly about the time King Ad gave away the family farm to the Saxon barbarians and just proceeds helter skelter for centuries one way or the other.
Yup, you can't win this one!
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