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Nodrog2 wrote:
"Leaving the elderley to die was an economic necessity."
I'm assuming here that nodrog2 is refering to the American Indians.
He (she? it?) has made an interesting point here. Certainly, in nomadic cultures like the Plains Indians had, starvation was always a very real possibility. Unlike the Indians who farmed (mostly, if I recall correctly, in the eastern states and around Mexico) the hunter/gatherer tribes had precious little ability to store food for lean times.
Something to remember next time someone waxes lyrical about the Noble Red Man.
"Scalping was introduced by the French in Canada, and the English elsewhere."
Richard has already refered to the established fact that European steel knives merely *accelerated* the barbaric practice of scalping, not created it.
Nodrog2 has also forgotten the influence of the Spanish and Portugese. Whatever the crimes of the British and French in North America, the Spanish and Portugese were a thousand times worse in the South. Still, they were from a time when "mercy to pagans" was as alien an idea as civil rights for viruses would be for us.
"The rest of the bruatality practiced is no different to any other culture at a similar stage of develpment."
Perhaps this is true, and perhaps not, but it is irrelevent. Whether stone-age technology Chinese, British, Germans or for that matter Easter Islanders committed vicious acts of brutality as a matter of course does not change the fact that these actions were brutal, cruel and *wrong*. Saying that others had done so thousands of years before in other parts of the world doesn't change that fact.
"Now it's much more fun to nuke them all."
If it is fun, its a form of fun which nobody yet has endulged in after that first orgy of destruction. It has become an article of faith among leftist pacifists that the American military-industrial complex is just itching at the palms to nuke the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Iraqis, Serbs, Kurds, Timorese, Brazilians, and, well, everyone else.
The reality is very different. Military planners no more relish the idea of incinerating millions of men, women and children than you or I would. Perhaps they are merely more realistic, in that sometimes you have to think the unthinkable in order to prevent worse.
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