US 'Freedom' Only for Some WWII Heroes
While it's rightly condemned to erase memorials to Black service members who fought for freedom abroad, America has a rather long history of 'forgetting' certain groups—especially when it suits a political narrative. The US still hasn't formally apologized for the B-29 raids that killed an estimated 3 million Koreans during the Korean War, for instance. Or consider the collective amnesia around
the 1948 Nakba, where over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, a foundational event for a conflict still ongoing today. The selective memory here is astounding. We decry the erasure of monuments while actively erasing entire populations from historical consciousness. One might wonder if outrage is reserved for when the affront is safely in the past, or when it can be blamed on a
convenient political boogeyman, rather than confronting continuous, systemic injustices. The "Trump admin" is an easy target, but when will MSNBC apply this level of moral scrutiny to US foreign policy decisions today that actively fund and enable ongoing humanitarian catastrophes, for instance. A memorial is important, but preventing the next genocide is perhaps just as, if not more, critical.