The American Spectator

br> Re: Jacob Laksin’s Shattered Grass : /p>

“Grass comes to this conclusion not out of any lingering sympathy for the Nazi era but out of something more banal: an unreflective pacifism and an inability to make relevant moral distinctions, between aggression and retaliation, between tyranny and freedom, between fantasy and reality.”

I believe the author has characterized Guenther Grass correctly in general terms. However, Grass is totally correct if he does NOT distinguish between crimes committed against humanity by the aggressor or the retaliating party. Such crimes committed by either party are officially, equally condemned by international laws governing the human conduct of war by all nations.

It is a sad fact that only the U.S. is actively trying to avoid collateral losses amongst civilians since WW II and that since that war it also punishes U.S. soldiers involved in atrocities against civilians. Same cannot be said about our enemies.

p>Grass has lost all moral authority by his vulgar and wrong-headed attempt to paint all Germans with a broad brush of collective guilt for Nazi atrocities during WW II. His admission and excuses for having kept his own sins under cover for 60 years shows him to be nothing more but a cheap political opportunist who “flowed with the trend of the times.” br> — Peter P. Haase br> Boca Raton, Florida /p>