On my way to class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee recently, I passed by the offices housing the teaching assistants in my department. One of the office doors had a message board on which the following was posted:
“Freedom: What a country has when it forces its military to commit mass genocide while convincing its citizens that the victims are less than humans. The rhetoric behind the war on terror should scare you.”
Notwithstanding the issue of whether or not it is appropriate for faculty to festoon office doors with highly partisan political material, as a Jew and an American I found the message to be offensive. As a (former?) friend of the author of the said message, I am utterly shocked.
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the political atmosphere in this country and on higher education campuses across the nation has been highly charged. Passionate opponents of the war in Iraq and the overall war against Islamist terrorism too often resort to using words like “fascist,” “Nazi” and “genocide” against their rivals.
But the gratuitous use of such words can have harmful ramifications. For one, those on the receiving end of such emotion-laden terms may feel taunted and insulted by such invective — as I did.
I loathe the Nazis; the genocide they committed against my people horrified me as a child, and will haunt me for the rest of my life. I also support the Iraq war and the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. To label people like myself “fascists” or supporters of “genocide” is offensive — and hurtful.
Further, resorting to such language suggests that one is incapable of or unwilling to engage in reasoned debate rooted in facts. It indicates a weak argument fueled by emotion over reason.
The foundations of democracy and hallmarks of the university include the principle that topics are discussed in a rational manner; that facts and well-reasoned arguments trump histrionics and hyperbole.
There are many legitimate reasons to oppose U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is no legitimate argument to justify labeling such actions “mass genocide.”
Real genocide
The U.S.-led forces removed a regime that was itself genocidal. Saddam Hussein’s regime ethnically cleansed and systematically murdered tens of thousands of Kurds in the north of Iraq.
His regime drained the ancient marshes of the Ma’adan, the Marsh Arabs, destroying their ancient way of life while killing thousands. The Ba’athists killed tens — perhaps hundreds — of thousands of Shi’ites. Saddam Hussein launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel and repeatedly pledged to destroy the Jewish state, which constitutes a threat of genocide.
The Taliban in Afghanistan not only harbored members of al-Qaida and refused to hand over its leaders; they treated women worse than animals, and they systematically slaughtered the Hazara, a local ethnic group. The United States ended the Taliban’s gender apartheid.
Did the U.S. kill innocent people while removing two of the world’s most odious regimes? Yes, but there has never been a war in the history of humanity in which innocents were unharmed.
Tragic deaths of the innocent however, do not constitute “mass genocide.” If that is the measuring stick for what constitutes genocide, then every war in history has been genocide.
But if every war is genocide, then the term has been rendered meaningless. Once the term genocide loses its true meaning, one debases the memory of the victims of actual genocides.
One belittles the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust; of the native tribes of the Americas; of the more than one million Anatolian Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Turks; or of the 1.7 million Cambodian victims of Pol Pot’s Marxist nightmare.
Abusing the term belittles the memory of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda who were hacked to death, and serves to remove the focus from the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
The same holds true for labeling political opponents “Nazis.” The Nazis have come to represent pure evil, for good reason. Not only did they murder six million Jews, but they exterminated millions of others and plunged the world into World War II.
You may not like President George W. Bush, but if Bush is a Nazi, then one can infer that the Nazis were no worse than Bush. If that’s true, then the Nazis weren’t so terrible after all because no rational person can argue that Bush has created extermination camps to eliminate millions of people from a specific ethnic group, et cetera.
Words do count. They should be used with care, especially in institutions of higher learning.
Former Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle assistant editor Zak Mazur is currently finishing a master’s degree in journalism and mass communications at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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