Issue of Sacrifice

[Michael Mccafferty]

>
> Note also that European war practices before the present century generally
> did not target civilians (during the actual battles).  Noncombatants were
> eliminated (if they were) by other means (displacement, starvation,
> terrorism, and so forth).  The Spaniards did not *directly* kill all tha
> many Nahua, and most of those were warriors.  Disease and societal
> collapse did the bulk of the work of native depopulation.

Plus, there is both prehistoric archaeological and reliable historical
ethnographic material showing that at least in North American the killing
of women and children was one way of warring.  So much of the
current discussion about this sort of thing reminds me too much of the
Japanese attempts to hide the facts of their World War II atrocities from
the modern generation.  Humans are humans.  Sheesh happens.




Michael McCafferty
C.E.L.T.
307 Memorial Hall
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
47405
mmccaffe at indiana.edu

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"Glory" (what a word!) consists in going
from the me that others don't know
to the other me that I don't know.

-Juan Ramon Jimenez

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