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.