I know this question sounds melodramatic and absurd, but I’ve been to rallies, marches, and protests where some clever wit has shouted out from the crowd, “We should have killed all you [expletives deleted] Indians, when we had the chance.” I’d like to believe that this kind of remark is just the huffing and puffing of bigoted buffoonery. But I’ve heard it too many times. Such sentiments may not be the rule, but neither are they the exception. “Why didn’t we kill you off, when we had the chance?” It’s a fair question. Why didn’t the United States keep dropping atomic bombs on Japan? If two bombs were good, wouldn’t four have been better? Why didn’t Turkey keep on killing Armenians after World War I? What stopped the murderous purges of China’s Mao Zedong, Russia’s Josef Stalin, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung? A friend of mine suggested that I include George W. Bush for his efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the rest of the world, but if I did that, I’d have to throw in AT&T, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and once you start down that road, there’s no end to the list of killers and killings.
