They invited me to be the first to post a letter about this story and so i thought I would. Hah.

The problem I have with this review is the implied notion that somehow invaders and the invaded are morally equivalent, that we can't have any "Euro-bashing". Why the hell not? And I don't mean in the neo-Rousseauian "noble savage" tradition of dopey multiculturalism. I mean in the "crimes were committed, we better fess up" tradition of honest historiography. King Philip's War was a genocidal rampage, and I mean that precisely, as in Einsatzgruppen-genocidal. America was founded on an a double-atrocity, Indian extermination and black slavery. No amount of aw-shucks good guy nonsense can erase that, any more than the Japanese can pretend that Nanking was a battle and not a massacre. One doesn't have to buy any of the pre-Columbian Eden crap a la Kirkpatrick Sale to admit that the Indians were here first and the white settlers displaced them peacefully were they could, and killed them off where they couldn't. Like the Tiger Platoon article the other day, we have to remember that Americans, when fearful or frustrated, are as capable of horrible actions as anybody else. News of a Marine mass murder in Iraq won't go away, either. We've got to learn from the past, grow up, stop pretending that human nature has banished here in America, and try not to repeat the same mistakes.

No one really doubts that the European settlement of the Americas constituted invasion, but that's little reason to claim some sort of moral divide (or lack of "moral equivalence") among contesting parties. Instead, consider the often bellicose means by which native peoples came to control use of territory: Why should we assume that the invading Britons were categorically distinct from, say, invading Tuscaroras? I suspect the will to make such distinctions owes far more to our present values than to specific episodes of seventeenth-century life.

S. Decay, ABD until the end of time

Thanks Dr. Levy for instilling some sense (and conscience) into America's newfangled rhetoric of non-culpability. It would be funny (if it weren't so sad) that we are now able to make taking accountability into somekind of thought-crime. Euro-bashing indeed!

Two comments:

1. Often neglected is that the native american groups in the area had already been weakened by epidemic disease. Mayflower found emptied villages and deserted areas. This was due to prior epidemic disease brought to new england area by cod fisherman and other sailors from europe who had already been there. So... mayflower not first there, and initial upper hand with natives was due to prior population wipe out by imported eurpean disease imports. These disease imports were not deliberate (unlike the later smallpox blanket deliberate WMD genocidal attacks), but did play a role in allowing colonists to have upper hand in dealing with local and regional native population.

2. Hard to say why the story should not be one of get whitey... europeans invaded land already occupied by others. stole their land. stole their food. killed them. Unless being moderate for moderate sake; gotta be even handed about all this... regardless of facts, truth, actual history... europeans were the bad guys; any and all hostile acts by native americans were in reaction to being invaded, stolen from, killed. Just because the story really is pretty one sided is no reason not to report it that way.

To the person who thanked me, you're welcome. Why I'm on this hobby horse is because of what has happened in the past and is happening today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm angered by the fact that when some German or Japanese soldier commits some atrocious act, it's never because he's really young/far from home/scared to death/just saw his buddy killed/can't tell the innocent from the partisans. No, they kill civilians because they are EVIL. Our "boys" kill civilians and all of the above are dragged out as excuses. Or we're told it never happened, like the deaths at Bagram or Abu Graib or in the mosque in Fallujah, were we had a Marine on tape plugging a wounded Iraqi in his custody, on tape for God's sake, yet he got off scot free. If we can't even face the atrocities in King Philip's War, how in hell are we going to stop ones happening today? And for those of you waiting to howl about how I've conflated the Germans and the Japanese with the Americans, I've done no such thing, nor would I for one second let them off the hook. I'm interested in actions. Societies may in no way be equivalently murderous, but individual acts sure can be. Was Mai Ly as bad as Babi Yar? No way. Should it have ended with several US military personnel facing a firing squad? You bet your ass.

I’m on a bit of a “hobby horse” too: as you put it, “sloppy thinking” abounds as does sloppy writing. My sense is that Mr. Cosgrove was trying to do a couple of things with his rhetoric of “Euro-bashing.” One laudable – as many have said, when we idealize victims they are no longer people, and hence, need only be dealt with on some abstract, sentimental level. But I also sense he was trying to say, “I’m not like those crazy liberals who want to blame America and Europe for everything.” I can picture a mini-Anne Coulter smirking somewhere in his subconscious mind. And hasn’t she and her ilk infected most of us? This isn’t the first time I have heard the rhetoric of neo-conservatives spouted by liberals in Salon and other like places. Orwell’s notion of the “thought-crime” has become a cliché – but damn if it isn’t true today.

And, as you state, the atrocities continue, while here at home the right-wing is winning an ongoing propaganda war with the basic message of “truth and responsibility are for America hating, liberal wimps.” How ironic that these same people call themselves conservatives, a word that connotes a kind of John Wayne stoicism that one would sentimentally associate with facing any truth. Ahh, but he slaughtered Indians in his own way . . .

Of course, when it comes down to it, all of these so-called “soldier supporters” – and I’m sure Coulter would count herself one of them -- have no problem passing the buck of atrocity to the lowest, poorest and youngest soldiers. Damn, these young people are culpable, but how can all of these people with yellow-ribbons on their cars sit by while those who pull the strings blithely coalesce power and money off these atrocities? Why no war-crimes tribunals for those with real power? The level of bull here palls the mind, and our rejuvenated wish to white-wash history allows all this “sloppy thinking” to pass as reasonable.