Let’s be careful when condemning the US

IMRAAN Buccus has drawn our attention to the tragedies with which the month of September is associated (“9/11 a bitter reminder to more than just the US”, The Star, September 11).

9/11 is the day when religious fanatics killed 3 000 innocent civilians to the greater glory of God. The day when the good citizens of Gaza danced on their rooftops when they heard.

My day of remembrance is 9/16, 1942, the day a Dutch policeman and a German soldier smashed into our house in Rotterdam and removed us to Nazi concentration camps.

More than 100 000 Jewish people from Holland were arrested in the subsequent months. Only 5 450 survived to return to the Netherlands.

Included in the 6 million Jews and countless others who died in that terrible war were my father and 40 members of his family.

Mention is made of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu for refusing to share a platform with former British prime minister Tony Blair.

The latter’s fault? He joined the US in helping to destroy a monster who had the lives of tens of thousands of his own Iraqi and Iranian citizens on his conscience, and who had the Kurdish people gassed and Kuwaitis slaughtered.

Has the venerable Arch ever expressed regret for the millions of Armenians, Russians, Jews and other innocents brutally murdered in the past century? True, he did visit Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem museum to the 6 million victims of the Holocaust where he opined that Jews must learn to forgive.

Buccus describes Saddam as a brutal dictator with the blood of thousands of Iranian children on his hands. He does not condemn the Iranians for using children as cannon fodder. He is also of the opinion that the manner of this monster’s death will remain an indictment on society. Surely the only indict- ment for which society is liable is permitting Saddam to live long enough to perpetrate his atrocities?

I find it preposterous for an intellectual such as Buccus to single out one or two individuals as examples of the horrors and abominations committed during the past century. I and millions of Europeans and Asians know that if it had not been for the sacrifices made by the USSR, the US and Britain, we would have suffered a ghastly death at the hands of the political and religious fanatics of this past century. Don Krausz

PICTURE: REUTERS RETHINK: A US soldier cries during a ceremony marking 9/11 on Tuesday. The world owes a lot to the US for the sacrifices it has made to protect the world from fanatics, says the writer.