Dispatches on War (Part VI)

If challenging the myths of history is out of fashion in American media, then allow me to say that the Jewish leaders in US did a tremendous job of sanctifying certain ``truths`` and criminalizing others. Let me elaborate.

When you criminalize a version of history by calling it ``revisionist``, you open the door for similar stances elsewhere. David Irving, a british historian is currently in an Austrian jail because he dared to suggest that historical and physical evidence points to the fact that jewish holocaust may not have occured, or at least did not occur as a planned activity on that large a scale. However, there is a law in Austria that criminalizes ``alternative`` view of holocaust! And hence, a historian is in jail because he dared to look at history from an independent perspective, rather than learning it through movies like ``Schindler`s List`` and ``Anne Frank`s diary`` etc.

And when you sanctify one version of history for a certain group of people, then is it any wonder that other groups demand similar rights? And when that happens, then history does not become a collection of facts, rather a result of lobby / pressure groups` interests and hollywood box office. And that is why you have movies like ``DC-911`` legendrazing President Bush as a man of steel trying to rally his people on September 11, rather than a man on the run from one underground shelter to another.

The author has done a fair job de-mythyfying historical events. It is quite true that more so than america and its western allies, it were the hated communist Russians who deserve the label of ``winners`` in WWII. It were them who demoralized and demolished the mighty germans, who breached Berlin defenses, and who took on more casualties than all europeans / americans COMBINED!

While it is true that winners write the history, in the case of WWII, it were the runner-ups who wrote the history. As the author has alluded, after winning the WWII, Russia lost the media war to the western allies. You never hear about the bravery and sacrifice of the Russian soldiers and russian people against the invading Germans. Recent books like ``The Greatest Generation``, which by the way came just in time to whip American public into war frenzy for Iraq invasion, continue to solidify and romanticize american role during 1911 - 1945.

Indeed, the role of the chinese in building the american railway lines is one of the greatest whitewash of 18th century. Soon after eastern and western lines were joined in Utah, there was a legislation passed by the US congress - The Chinese Exclusion Act. This act, by law, barred immigration from China.