A history lesson for The Warmonger

One irate Fairfax reader had this to say about Australia's historically illiterate prime minister......

The question and answer at a 14 September 2014 Darwin press conference which gave rise to Warwick’s comment:

QUESTION:

Where does responsibility lie for the rise of ISIL?

PRIME MINISTER:

Look, that's a question that people are entitled to ponder. For myself, I find it hard to believe that anyone would want to practice the kind of barbarism against innocent people which we have seen on an abundant scale from the ISIL movement over the last few months. We've seen beheadings, we've seen crucifixions, we’ve seen mass executions, we've seen hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes. We've had women forced into sexual slavery, we've had the deaths of very young children. We've had tens of thousands of people besieged on Mount Sinjar. We have seen cruelty on an extraordinary scale. What we have seen is an exaltation in atrocity unparalleled since the Middle Ages. Where does this come from? What evil in the human heart gives rise to this? I just don't know. All I know is that decent people everywhere, regardless of their religion, regardless of their culture, should unite against it. [my red bolding]

I'm sure North Coast Voices readers will be able to easily add to Warwick's list of large-scale atrocities committed since the Middle Ages - that is after the beginning of the 15th century.

A quick look at International Criminal Court indictments opens a window onto a number committed in recent years, including war crimes and crimes against humanity which Abbott apparently knows nothing about or cynically chooses to ignore.

Before that the Turkish courts-martial of persons accused of genocide in Armenia during WW1, the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crime trials covering genocide and crimes against humanity in WW2, media reports of Mau Mau-British atrocities in 1950s Kenya, the My Lai massacre courts-martial in the United States 1970-71, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia addressing ethic cleansing and war crimes in the 1990s, all document aspects of the history of "cruelty on an extraordinary scale" over the last 100 years.

As for where responsibility lies for the rise of Islamic State militants - one does not have to look further than the last war the Howard Coalition Government (of which Tony Abbott was a Cabinet Minister) led Australia into.