A Scarlet Letter on the US War Chest

When China recently celebrated 60 years of Communist rule, the New York Times stepped up to the plate. The newspaper pointed out that the kitschy fanfare was geared to wow crowds, and concealed a heinous rise to power. (China Is Wordless on Traumas of Communists’ Rise, 10/2/09)

Mao’s troops starved 160,000 civilians to death in order to defeat the Nationalist garrison at Changchun, one of the victories “hailed” in Chinese history books. Some citizens of Changchun survived, just barely, by eating grass, corpse flesh and leather belts. This is just the tip of a gargantuan iceberg of horror:

“There were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party’s rise to power — not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao’s drive to consolidate power.”

To put this in perspective, the lives lost during all of WWII also number in the tens of millions.

Well and good it is it to point out such monstrous violence, even as the CCP attempts to bury it under martial pageantry and the sands of time. But if we in the US are so keen on righteousness, as we should be, then let’s own up. There’s a big red letter H on our chests: the bloody H of Hypocrisy. If we are going to hurl verbal stones at the East, we ought to throw some heavy duty boomerangs too.

When the 4th of July comes around, where--alongside the rockets, hoopla and sloganeering--are the “solemn pauses” to honor Native Americans? Where are the humble and heartfelt apologies for the slaughter that followed in the wake of Manifest Destiny?

What is the greatest genocide known? The annihilation of the peoples of the North and South American Continents, beginning in 1492 and continuing into the 1800’s when “Injun scalps” could be sold for cash and the last renegade Apaches were overwhelmed and cornered like scrappy wolves.

As soon as the threat was gone, Injun logos popped up on everything from tobacco products to sports jerseys. What’s worse, a callous CCP parade or the Buffalo Nickel, which proudly portrayed Native and bison, both of which the United States mercilessly sought to eradicate? These nasty nickels circulated for decades through the white man’s bustling cash registers.

And guess what? The Buffalo Nickel is back, obverse and reverse. It’s the official pure gold bullion coin of the US Treasury.

And hey, aren’t we still manufacturing and selling Tomahawk missiles?

Why cast out the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, but not the log in your own?