Belgian Orphans - There's this

Belgian Orphans - There's this notion among the Anti-Bush left that most of us who support the war are guileless dittoheads, ripe sucks who've just fallen off the intellectual turnip truck; people who are just not sophisticated enough to read between the lines of what they consider callow propaganda.

I, for one, am an inveterate "show me" skeptic, especially on matters of war, and wartime propaganda. I recall the "Belgian Orphans" atrocity stories in World War I, where German soldiers in Belgium were reputed to have burned and bayonetted orphanages full of children while advancing toward France. All untrue, of course, and object lessons in the power of wartime propaganda.

So it's hard to read things like this, and while not particularly doubting their veracity, certainly wonder about their timing (this from Ann Clwyd of the Times of London, via Andrew Sullivan this morning:

“There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food . . . on one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein’s youngest son] personally supervise these murders.”

So there's the thinking person's conundrum; World War I showed us the folly of guileless belief; the Holocaust showed us the danger of dogmatic skepticism.

No answer, here, really. Just hoping we, as a nation, are both critical enough consumers of information to discern truth from manipulation.

I wonder if there's enough crossover between "endemic post-ironic cynicism" - which we have in spades in our society - and "healthy skepticism" to do the job?

Posted by Mitch at March 18, 2003 10:22 AM