I just read the most absolutely amazing statement from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan, in opening the first-ever General Assembly commemoration of the World War II Holocaust, said:

"How could such evil happen in a cultured and highly sophisticated nation-state in the heart of Europe whose artists and thinkers had given the world so much," Annan asked. "Truly is has been said: "All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."

"The purveyors of hatred, were not always and may not be in the future, only marginalized extremists," he said.

You know, I believe that, by definition those that incite mass murder are extremist. How is the "kill them all" position not extreme? Is he really saying that the Nazis, because they were Western and "sophisticated", were not extreme? Or, is he shifting the burden of the Holocaust from its German perpetrators to the rest of the world that allegedly "did nothing"?

It could be the latter. Maybe he's kissing up to the Germans, who are "sick" of talking about the Holocaust.

I may be reading too much into this, but I can also see Annan's statement as a veiled attack on the United States. Is he really warning the world against the aggression of the "cultured and sophisticated" United States? Is the rest of the world the "good men" that are obliged to do something to oppose US policy?

I don't know. But I do know that when you characterize mass murder as not necessarily an act of extremism, you're also minimizing events like the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda. They were horrific. They represent the absolute worst, the most extreme acts that mankind is capable of. Pretending otherwise is just another way to try to validate another round of Bush=Hitler bullshit.