What Is A Holocaust?

In 1933, as the world was in the grip of the first Great Depression, socialist economist R. Palme Dutt wrote:
"The more obvious and glaring expressions of this process, the burning of foodstuffs, the dismantling of machinery that is still in good condition, strike the imagination of all. But all do not yet see the full significance of these symptoms ...For war is only the complete and most systematic working out of the process of destruction. Today they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life. Tomorrow they will be burning living human bodies."

Thus he not only predicted WWII and put his finger on the root cause, he quite eerily predicted the Holocaust that attended it. For it was only WWII that brought the capitalist world and specifically, the United States, out of the great depression.

We emerged from WWII with an economy that ever since has been dependent on war making to keep it 'healthy'. ["a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment." -Ike] Eisenhower realized that and warned against the 'military industrial complex'. That's why WE had to have a COLD WAR after WWII. Not because of any real threat that the USSR was about to conquer the world. Certainly not because of China. We needed to keep the war spending going. We needed to keep military 'employment' at war time levels, less we fall back into the depression. That's why the Koreans and Vietnamese had to suffer under our bombs. It was not because of the threat of 'communist expansion' it was because of the threat of capitalist collapse. It wasn't because the war makers really cared about the people in those countries. We needed to make war someplace. They just got the short end of the stick. It's why, when the USSR collapsed, we didn't get a 'peace dividend', we got the 'War on Terror' and surprise, surprise, somehow Osama and his little band required roughly the same level of military spending as the Soviet Union. It's why the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering our bombs and bullets today. It's not because 'Islamic terrorist' pose the 'great threat' now as 'communism' did then. Otherwise we'd have to find gainful employment for millions of our young people no longer needed by the military and the captains of industry would have to get off the tax payers dole. It's why, surprise, surprise, Obama, another 'peace candidate' (like Nixon) is continuing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's the sad truth of the matter.

You start a war to solve your internal economic problems. You mix in a little racism. [ Kill a gook for God.] You start "burning living human bodies" to use Dutt's prophetic phrase, and then you have a holocaust.

NOTE: Eisenhower on the Holocausts
In that famous last speech that I quoted above Eisenhower writes:

"We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts..."

Later in the speech he mentions WWII and the Korean War, and I think it obvious that the first of the 3 holocausts that involved our country was WWI. So Eisenhower considered the Korean War a holocaust, and I am quite sure that had he lived to see the final tally he would agree with me that Vietnam was an American Holocaust.

From the Amazon Discussion: "Vietnam: American Holocaust" in the history community

Vietnam: American Holocausthttp://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com