Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Nuremberg reborn

Steve Gilliard talks about the new Nuremberg:
. . .after 9/11, Bush asked for nothing. Not to save gas, not to enlist, nothing. So the burden fell on the willing and they are tired. Tired of war, tired of begging for food, tired of seeing their friends horrifically wounded . . . Bush has demanded nothing, and he gets nothing.
The US after WWII understood not only the burdens but the rewards of shared sacrifice . . . This administration does not. It's as if Herbert Hoover was asked to fight the Nazis without rallying the public. . . And how do we do it? By tossing away every lesson we've learned from Nuremberg. We build gulags, we sent people into a modern version of night and fog, where people are beaten to death, we coerse our allies into accepting kidnapping flights and dump the passengers in places where they will be tortured . . .
The excuse for violating what we once rejected was more than hubris. Every society has sadists. Most keep them under check, few allow them real power. Rumsfeld unleashed them, their worst instincts justified and it went from CENTCOM down to their field . . . Rumsfeld unleashed these people because he thought they had an easy solution to a difficult problem. But instead, they allow children to be raped and the innocent murdered for no gain. None.
We had embraced what we had fought so hard to end, not because we were inherently evil, but because it was one more easy thing to do for a man who always chosen the easy, wrong path.
I would like to think we will redeem ourselves one day, that the sadists and their bosses will face justice, real justice, in a large court for the world to see, to redeem the promise of what was begun at Nuremberg. . .
Read the whole post.

No comments: