From: golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy)
Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
Organization: University of Toronto Chemistry Department
Distribution: can
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 21:01:24 GMT

In article <92316.135417SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> John G. Spragge <SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
>Now the 11th day of the 11th month has come, we see two items of note:
>the first, that the CBC ombudsman has condemned "The Valour and the
>Horror" for sloppiness and lack of balance, and that the senators
>involved have taken that as a vindication.
>

Why should anyone believe that the CBC's ombudsman's credentials are
any better (or worse) than Brian McKenna's...it just sound like the
suits at CBC are terrified of losing their lucrative taxpayer handouts.

The CBC bureaucracy has basically decided it wants to become a
propaganda arm of the Canadian government.

>Whoever took their complaint to the ombudsman took their case to the
>right place, and got the right result; the CBC will not show the series
>again until and unless the producers correct their errors. The senators,
>on the other hand, should not take this as any kind of vindication;
>it merely shows that not only did they have no right to try to
>dictate Canadian history, they had no reason to do so, either.
>

What errors?

>Senators have the least right of anyone to call hearings of this
>sort: unelected but not experts, politicians but not accountable,
>they should never be allowed to meddle in the way Canadians tell
>their stories. To the feeble excuse that the NFB uses public money,
>I reply that since governments control the source materials (military
>records, etc.) for military history, they will always have control
>over the way military historians write if we let them.
>

The story is that CBC succombed to political intimidation.

>
>As someone whose uncles did not all "make it back", let me say something
>on the deeper matter of whether Bomber Command's pursued an immoral
>policy in the war. Not having been there, I can only repeat what I
>have heard from those who were, and who studied the matter; that by
>the night bombing offensive destroyed German civilian businesses.
>By redirecting labour and resources from "inessential" businesses the
>RAF destroyed, Albert Speer could actually boost armaments production.
>Gwynne Dyer's comment (in "War") that the bombing offensive became
>an "aerial equivalent of trench warfare".
>

This does not make it moral...war is not a pleasant business, and
because we deemed that evil and immoral acts were necessary on our
part to win the war, doesn't mean that we have to deny the fact that
they were evil and immoral acts to assuage our consciences and our
guilt. 

>I also recall more personal comments, from those who fought; the
>author of "Terror in the Starboard Seat" that Sir Arthur Harris
>did not care how many air crews he sacrificed, as long as the
>Germans also suffered. I also remember a friend of mine who was in
>the Dresden raid recounting how, after the war, he had listened
>to Harris give a bellicose speech about how the RAF could destroy
>Germany all over again. I remember well his reflection: "We knew
>what we'd done".
>
>It seems to me that we owe both the survivors and the dead an
>honest effort to remember and learn the lessons of the war.
>The CBC ombudsman now says "The Valour and the Horror" does not
>qualify, because it lacks both accuracy and balance. But the
>efforts by politicians in the Senate to meddle in the ways
>Canadians remember our history ought to stop.
>

The Senate was successful...authorized cleansed history will be
preserved.  We only need concern ourselves with the war crimes of
our enemies, not our own.

Gerald
Newsgroups: can.politics,soc.culture.canada,can.general