Richard Butler Quotes

In 1936, Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in an effort to obtain an African colony like other European Countries had. Over 50 nations had promised aid to Ethiopia if attacked but then the Italian attacks came, it was not just soldiers with some small artillery and vehicles. Instead it was a full modern army with not only heavy artillery and tanks, but extensive use of air power against villages and towns which generally hardly had rifles. The airplane carnage of civilian populations was a shock to the world. However, the tactics were studied by the Italian German Fascist allies who further developed air power use against unarmed towns and cities in the Spanish Civil war. The aid promised to Christian Ethiopia never materialized because there was a worldwide depression and the great powers would have had to commit to major war—not just send some arms and ammunition. The Ethiopians mostly fought with spears and knives. The Fascists were thus emboldened for the invasion of Europe a few years later.

Turkey, under the control of the triumvirate of the 3 Young Turks had massacred almost all of the Armenian population in the area claimed by Turkey. At the end of WWI, there were many demands that those who ordered the policy of a Turkish genocide and those who carried it out by brought to justice—tried and punished. The Sultan had done little if anything to stop the slaughters although he was very weak, Turkey under the Young Turks had also picked the wrong side and allied with the Germans. The Sultan and his Grand Vizier were trying to pick up the pieces and maintain the Ottoman Empire as best they could despite they the fact that they lost control of much of their vast territory. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Grand Vizier virtually admitted the crimes and committed the Turkish government to determining the guilty and bringing them to justice. He actually had 50 of the worst offenders arrested (See {620595}.). However, there were a few tried and one governor of a province was hanged and a few others received short jail sentences. Talaat, the worst of The Young Turks regarding the genocide, escaped to Germany. But he was tracked by a surviving Armenian who assassinated Talaat. The assassin was acquitted by a sympathetic German court which ruled that the extermination of the assassin’s family had been so traumatic that temporary insanity relieved the assassin of criminal responsibility.

This statement was made before the 2012 Syrian Revolution.

One of the most murderous struggles in history was when Turkey was fighting Armenia. The peoples had, and still do have, a great hatred towards each other. The Turks had a large ethnic Armenian population and the Turkish government decided to “relocate” them. In the process many Armenians were brutally murdered, The Armenians however also butchered Turks whenever they could. The events were so brutal, that neither Turkey or Armenia teach about their own atrocities in their schools, but tell their students of the other’s atrocities. Historial denial governs this conflict and its war crimes.

The soldiers obeyed their orders and killed every man, woman and child they could find outside the city. They beheaded captured prisoners, bayoneted pregnant women and children. All civilian houses were burned, often with the people trapped inside.

The U.S. was at war with Spain and Filipino insurgents for the control of the Philippines. During this war there were a few senior U. S. Officers who in later times would have been tried and jailed for war crimes. The men under them were brutal and committed atrocities at their orders. See {615368}.

The Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO were preparing a coordinated attack on Israel. After statements like this, the Israeli’s preempted the attack, routed the Egyptian Airforce and Army, and then defeated the other three. The Arab “War of Liberation” resulted in the Arabs losing more with Israel tripling it’s control of area. The quotation however cast a pall over attempts thereafter to create a Palestinian State as in effect the PLO had announced a policy of a Holocaust—the extermination of the Israelis. The dispute over land was not for the Jewish state a land negotiation amenable to compromise and give and take, but instead was an existential threat to Israel whereby any compromise might result in the death of the entire population. As the ultimate intention of the PLO had been revealed.

The Colonel defined people capable of bearing arms as males and females over 20 years of age. Many were slaughtered. Fortunately, most of his officers and men did not follow this order but enough did to make it one of the most disgraceful events in American military history. Smith was court marshaled and found guilty but his punishment was to be cashiered from the army. There were many atrocities committed by the minorities of both sides in this brutal war. Military and Congressional Investigations caused the army manual to be revised military policies reformed.

Saloth Sar Pol Pot. He was responsible for the brutal killing of over 1 million of his own people.

The assassination was attempted in 1944 and after its failure, he was shot be a firing squad.

Many cultures and nations, even after a century will not admit to the human rights violations that previous governments might have committed. Most dramatic is the Turkish government's not even allowing studies or discussions about the organized government mass murders of citizens of Armenian extraction—–the so called "Armenian Genocide ", but even in his native Poland there was and has been little admission of those Poles who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in the murder of millions of polish citizens and stole the residences, farms and other properties of Jews and other Poles who the Germans sent to concentration camps and even for the few who survived threatened them with death when they returned to reclaim their own property. Most modern societies have great difficulty coming to grips with police brutality and often denying that it is an endemic problem as opposed to one or two "bad apples".