Sometimes I'm troubled by what our country has done in the past

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Moose said:
Sure we “stole” land from the original “owners”… describe it as you shall.

The point was that we have never waged a war with the specific intent of colonizing a structured foreign country/government
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The nations of the Native Americans might disagree. So, incidentally, might the Mexicans. And, of course, the Canadians.
 
The OP sure seemed like finger pointing.

The act of forgiveness is a blessed gift, not just reserved for the living.
 
Seeing the title of this thread, I’m reminded of the Obama “apology tour.” Where he blamed us for being the only nation that “used a nuclear weapon,” for Guantanamo, and the war on terror just to name a few. Heck, I’m surprised he didn’t blame us for starting WWll.
 
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Mark121359 said:
Seeing the title of this thread, I’m reminded of the Obama “apology tour.” Where he blamed us for being the only nation that “used a nuclear weapon,” for Guantanamo, and the war on terror just to name a few. Heck, I’m surprised he didn’t blame us for starting WWll.
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So and to @Theo520
If someone said abortion, 60,000,000 abortions have taken place since Roe v Wade and I’m troubled that our country has done it, it’s a national disgrace and a national tragedy, would you be saying the same thing?

BTW, I do believe both of you have personalized your comments. I won’t say something like your comment reminds me of something.

Now, to the main story again in post #1, about the Bells being returned to the Philippines. The article on the One American News Netowrk (OANN) talks of a massacre. OANN is very conservative. So, I don’t understand your alls comments as if this story should not be discussed.

What if we were talking about Churchill and those events in Bangladesh in the 1940s called famine. Do we discuss this or just say it is too uncomfortable to talk about?

I just heard on an Evangelical Radio station of how and this was talking about abortion, how sometimes, the women might rationalize the wrong they did. I’m not going to ascribe this to others but I could say what they are saying reminds me of that.

IOW, please talk on topics and not about others. There is a clear subject matter.

The article on the Bengali famine of the 1940s:


BTW, per our presence in Afghanistan, I find no shame in this. You know, if we attacked our enemy now the way we attacked our enemies in World War II, it would mean attacking civilians (Dresden which death toll wise, I"ve heard may have been worse than where the atomic bombs were dropped). This whole road is rather difficult.
Addendum; if all I see are personal comments, I will assume, one has really nothing to add to the conversation and will not respond.
 
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From hereon, I will avoid this question because it will bring into mind too many parts of our history, the nation moving west, various wars.

But I do know, with the present time, we have a President whose administration has done very little at fault or wrongdoing per foreign policy and I think that should stay that way. With Saudi Arabia, I do wonder a bit.
 
“The US is a nation of human beings. As such, it will be guilty of many crimes, just like every other nation of human beings.”

Well said.

“Sometimes I’m troubled by what our country has done in the past.”

Heck, i’m troubled by some of the things our country is doing right now:
  • Abortion
  • Euthanasia
  • Racism
  • profligate spending and the expansion of the national debt
  • etc.
  • increasing attacks on religious freedom
I love this nation. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t care that it does bad things. I want us to be better.
 
Here is the NPR story, note, it even has a picture where it looks like Naval officers are with Filipinos in returning these bells in a ceremony:


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U.S. Returns Balangiga Church Bells To The Philippines After More Than A Century​

Julie McCarthy Facebook Twitter
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Ella Mage/NPR

Updated at 9:29 p.m. ET.

After a 117-year hiatus, the iconic church bells of a central Philippines town will ring in the country once again, ending one of the most contentious quarrels between the United States and the Philippines.

U.S. soldiers carted three of the Balangiga town’s church bells off as war trophies during the 1899-1902 Philippine-American War. The Philippines has argued for decades that it was a historical wrong that need righting.

On Tuesday, U.S. defense officials and the ambassador returned the bells to the Philippine authorities at a military base in Manila.
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Again, I think this demonstrates this is a legitimate matter to discuss. I’ve even heard that the bombing of the Maine of which was a linchpin for this conflict is a questionable event. It looks like there is even a clergyman out there.
 
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Victoria33 said:
So and to @Theo520
If someone said abortion, 60,000,000 abortions have taken place since Roe v Wade and I’m troubled that our country has done it, it’s a national disgrace and a national tragedy, would you be saying the same thing?
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If we had stopped doing it many many decades ago, YES
it is a time for forgiveness. I feel this is appropriate regarding slavery

But we haven’t stopped abortion so your inclusion of that example is inappropriate. You have a right to feel troubled about what your country is doing in the present.
 
I’m more troubled about the current slaughter of the innocents in the womb than anything in the past. I’m more proud of how we as a nation rectified our sins from the past than I am troubled by anything from the past.
 
Victoria33 said:
Sometimes I’m troubled by what our country has done in the past. This is not a thread to bash other countries but for sincere discussion. I mean, how do you see it as an American? And let’s not make any mistake, many, perhaps most countries have done wrongs. This is not a finger-pointing thread.

Case in point, this article in reference to the Spanish-American war from well over 100 years ago (Started in 1898). This is just in the current events news stories.

https://www.oann.com/u-s-returns-bells-looted-after-philippine-wartime-massacre/

U.S. returns bells looted after Philippine wartime massacre​

December 11, 2018

MANILA (Reuters) – Church bells taken as war trophies by U.S. forces more than a century ago arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday, ending Manila’s decades-long quest for the return of some of the most famous symbols of resistance to U.S. colonialism.

The “Bells of Balangiga” landed in a military cargo plane at a Manila air base ahead of their return on Saturday to a church in Samar, the central island where U.S. troops in 1901 massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Filipinos to avenge an ambush that killed 48 of their comrades.
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We have and continue to do so…lamenting history is a waste of spirit, learning from history is a what the wise strive to do…living in the present and being the best we can be right now to each other is what we should all be doing.

Every country or civilization in the history of time has at one point or another acted cruelly…the US is no better or worse…in fact we have become the light on the hill because we continue to learn from past mistakes and take great efforts to never repeating them.

Just my .02

M
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There is no doubt that in the course of history Americans have engaged in sinful behavior. Not sure why this would be troubling or shocking. Own up to it, say we were wrong, and move on.
 
Hodos said:
There is no doubt that in the course of history Americans have engaged in sinful behavior. Not sure why this would be troubling or shocking. Own up to it, say we were wrong, and move on.
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Here, here…!
 
Historian Xiao Chua says the most credible accounts suggest that the Americans did not “wantonly kill civilians.” Rather, they destroyed everything else.

“Because they were still mad — they burned the village. They killed the animals. They burned crops. Basically, the whole of Samar [island] was turned into a ‘howling wilderness,’ ” he says, using a phrase contained in an actual order.
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It may not have been as bad as what some accounts say. I"m glad this was discussed enough to know this.
 
Exactly. I’m not losing sleep over this stuff. Furthermore, it’s almost exclusively perpetrated by the Federal Government. The average person doesn’t want war and killing. We need to hold our leadership responsible and not follow them blindly.
 
Yes, we’ve certainly made grave mistakes in the past. But I’m more concerned with what our country is doing in the present regarding refugees and (illegal) immigrants, climate change and pollution, healthcare, the middle class, minorities, women, gay rights, religious rights, our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism, and job security. That’s what we should be concerned about, in my view.
 
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Right. America did horrible stuff in the past just like other countries.

What can we do about it? Nothing.

Let’s focus on what we can do, today.
 
I think the word which comes to mind is “perspective”.

I do not make light of anything which has been done by our country, or members of it (such as armed forces). Having said that, one might read an even-handed description of what Mao did in China, or Stalin in Russia, or Hitler in Germany.

None of those excuse what may have happened in the Philippines (and I am not sure that you have an even-handed report of what actually happened).

But it does tend to lend some perspective by looking at history.

I was in Vietnam. My Lai occurred in Vietnam, but I am not going to walk the Walk of Shame because of it. The incident was due to a number of factors, the primary ones being the officers on the ground did not have control of their troops.

But in spite of My Lai, I have no problem feeling that I did the very best I could in the circumstances I was in, and would do it again were it necessary.

Again, perspective. If the troops in the Philippines 120 years ago committed the equivalent of war crimes, that needs to be condemned proportionally.
 
Well, actually, it is perpetrated primarily by the troops on the ground and their officers.
 
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