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  • The Blowhards of Brussels

    THE BLOWHARDS OF BRUSSELS

    NYPost

    April 10, 2004 -- Belgium, which apparently has decided that it was
    meant to be the world's moral compass, has pronounced a new judgment:
    The worst genocide in recorded history, declare the Belgians, is
    America's treatment of its indigenous people. American Indians, that
    is.

    But please don't take this as a criticism of the United States, they
    add.

    A display at the nation's Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Brussels
    - meant to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan horrors -
    contains a panel listing the tragic history of genocide.

    The Nazi Holocaust is there.

    So are the killing fields of Cambodia and the massacre of Armenians
    during World War I.

    But worst of them all, says the official display, came in North
    America at the hands of European settlers and immigrants.

    And not just in the past, either - according to the display, said
    genocide began in 1492 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus and
    "continues to this day."

    The Belgian defense ministry defended the display, claiming it was
    based on the work of "noted scholars."

    But it's a curiously selective listing.

    For one thing, there's no mention of the millions of Russians who died
    under Josef Stalin's murderous rule. Nothing about the gulags or the
    forced starvation of Ukrainians.

    And, wouldn't you know, there's not a word in the display about the
    reign of terror perpetrated in the Congo for decades by its onetime
    occupying power - a place called Belgium.

    Of course, the notion that genocide is being waged now on this
    continent is taken seriously only by Ramsey Clark and his ilk - and in
    faculty lounges from Cambridge, Mass., to Berkeley, Calif.

    Equally ludicrous - and increasingly treated as fact in those same
    spots - is the notion that Columbus, and the many Europeans who
    followed him to the New World, were genocidal maniacs who decimated
    the native population.

    Of course, had Europeans somehow never managed to discover the
    Americas, those same gentle indigenous folk would likely have come
    under the control of empires like the Aztecs and the Incas - societies
    in which ritual torture, enslavement of women and infant sacrifice
    were central.

    In today's politically correct world, though, any society - no matter
    how cruel - is considered preferable to a capitalist democracy.

    Rather than lecture the rest of the world on moral niceties, the
    Belgians should stick to a topic they truly understand.

    Like waffles.
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