None of these Senators has shown the capacity to face the reality of past American crimes against humanity, much less call for accountability from their perpetrators. Why should we even hope they won't embrace the failures of the past as the policy of the future? What's to keep them from perpetuating the old ways of thinking and acting, as represented by Kissinger, Albright, and Shultz? Even when those three talk, as they did, about climate change being the single most pressing threat facing both the U.S., and the world, is there any senator on that committee who can hear that warning over the relentless shrieking-in-horror over ISIS or Ukraine or Iran? What reason is there to believe that these senators aren't just more war-criminals-in-waiting?
The United States has achieved much since 1945, and the achievements have come at awful cost as well. It is as if we have reached a collective moment of mid-passage uncertainty where, like Macbeth, we might well ponder where we're headed:
By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
To achieve justice, a society must value and seek justice
None of this is reason to let those former zombie leaders off their own hooks. We as a country, as a moral society, still need to arrest these people, bring them to trial, and hold them accountable for the war crimes, torture, suffering, and death they have inflicted on others, and sometimes on us, all in our name. Accountability for the past is the surest safeguard for the future. We need to restore some semblance of justice to a culture grown numb and vicious. And to roll back some of that numb viciousness, we need to proceed with relentless compassion, and even with a willingness to embrace mercy for any who might finally come to seek truth and reconciliation.
There's little reason to think that what we need to be a healthy, honest, open culture is anything like what we're going to get. Both Houses of Congress are dominated by macho posturing and excited foreplay for war. The American police state slowly rises, unchecked even when it's noticed. The populace seems restless and unhappy and full of blame for others without agreement on what is wrong. It is as if we have come no distance at all from 50 years ago, when our government started assassinating non-violent Black Panther Party members in a murderously successful suppression of human freedom led by the FBI.
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