In 2003 the US government assembled an international army to
invade and occupy Iraq, in order to destabilize the region and thus allow
Israel to feel more secure. France refused to join. The Imperial rulers were so
offended that for the next three years the menus of the US Congress’s
cafeterias sold “freedom fries” instead of “French fries”.
The US’s idiot-fringe has never forgiven the French and
their nation. “If it wasn’t for us you’d all be speaking German!” “Our boys
saved you last time, yet now you won’t help us!” Never mind that the Iraq
venture was illegal, immoral, and based on the deliberate lie that that nation
had hidden weapons of mass destruction ready to launch at 45 minutes’ notice.
On one international web-forum I once had occasion to criticise
the US military’s routine torture of POWs in Iraq (members of the local
resistance). In response, one simple-minded patriot demanded to know why I felt
no gratitude to the US military of the 1940s for saving Australia from invasion
and occupation by the armies of Japan. Another poster frothed with indignation:
“My father was a US Marine, and he was a fine man and a war hero, and how dare
you demean his heroism by questioning the Marine Corps?” And so on.
It’s a dangerous path to follow. Is one never to forgive the
descendants of an ancestor’s enemies? “Those Afghan bastards! My great-grandpa
died invading their country. I will never buy an Afghan rug! The more villagers
killed by drone strikes, the better.” “Those Russian bastards! My German
grandpa froze to death during the siege of Leningrad. Let’s nuke the whole
nation now!”
Is one never to resent atrocities committed by criminal
gangs claiming to act in the name of an old political ally?
In October last year I noted a great-uncle’s role in the
slaughter of Nigerian natives rebelling against the British invasion of their
homeland in 1902. I wondered if that slaughter might be in part responsible for
the current atrocities against Christians in the region. [You can find a direct link to my piece
by Googling “Uncle Charles and the Boko Haram”.]
In the early 1800s a great-great-great-grandfather of mine made
a modest fortune as a trafficker of opium from India to China. A few of his
rupees (sadly not many, but a few) have trickled down to me. Do I deserve the
wrath of a billion Chinese descendants of his victims? “You bastard! If it
wasn’t for your criminal ancestor, our families would be rich today.”
It’s alarming how many people do hold grudges for
ridiculously long times. Western newspapers carry resentful accusations of
Kurds’ and Arabs’ killing of European invaders a thousand years ago – and even
of the Persians for their invasion of Europe two thousand years ago.
There are European Jews who have not yet forgiven Egyptians for enslaving the
Hebrews three thousand years ago. The descendants of African slaves are
claiming trillions of dollars in reparations for their ancestors’
sufferings. And so on.
In light of such nonsense, I suppose re-living atrocities of
a mere seventy years ago is not surprising. The government of Israel has a regular
blackmail campaign against the current taxpayers of Germany in respect of their
forebears’ crimes in the 1940s. In decades to come, lawyers for Palestinian
survivors will be seeking redress from Israeli taxpayers in respect of today’s
brutalities. Maybe the Palestinian government-in-exile will persuade Germany to
pay the blackmail money directly to it, and cut out the middle-man. At least
there would be a logic to that.
Interestingly, few conquered peoples ever do allow their
languages to be replaced by those of their conquerors. Wholesale ethnic
cleansing is effective, and we can expect Arabic to disappear from Palestine
when all the natives have been removed from there. But when the local populace
is left in place – as it has been in so many places in Europe over the
Centuries – its language almost always survives intact.
The French would not all be speaking German if Hitler
had won his War – any more than the Germans spoke the languages of any of their
conquerors when Hitler’s War was lost. Whatever the current US Empire does and doesn’t
do to its conquered peoples, it won’t alter the languages they speak.
