About a decade ago, a book came out the central thesis of which was that the entire German state and population was responsible for the horrors of the Nazi multiple genocides against Slavs, Gypsys, gays, Catholics, and Jews. It was almost immediately trashed on a number of levels. I fail to imagine why. Let us consider the topic from the perspective offered by Richard Rubenstein and John Roth in their book Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy. We shall borrow the simple example of what was involved in shipping by train thousands of human beings from various places around Europe to the killing centers in Poland. There the bureaucrats who had to devise the plans. There were the engineers who drove the trains. There were the firemen who stoked the engines. There were the station-masters who had to keep tabs on the trains. There were the negotiations between the rail companies and the government over compensation - what they would be paid for their human cargo. There were the thousands who stood on train platforms as these trains passed by. There were the legal theorists who made all this above board. There were those who witnessed the mass arrests and the loadings of human beings in to boxcars. There were the accountants who had to ensure the books were balanced, with line items for the various human beings being labeled properly (the Nazis were nothing if not meticulous). Just from this one example alone, there are quite literally tens of thousands of typical German citizens involved, either actively or passively, in the process of eliminating whole populations. The idea that somehow an entire generational cohort of Germany is not at fault is easily gotten rid of by an examination of modern logistics. Then consider all the other aspects necessary for supporting an infrastructure for official murder, as well as the on-going official dehumanization of the various victims and the notion of limited accountability and responsibility to state officials become nonsensical.
In the same way, we can not pretend that we neither know of our nation's continuing reliance upon torture as official policy nor that the simple-minded claim that as neither I nor others actually tortured individuals we bear no measure of responsibility for doing so. Regardless of ideological support or rejection; regardless of protests official or unofficial - we, all Americans share a measure of responsibility for this nightmare. We do not share blame, which is limited to those who actually commit these acts, and the officials who endorse them; we do, however, share responsibility.
For an ethical individual, one way to atone is to speak out. We have to make "torture" a campaign issue. We might, were we honest, even include the possibility of turning soon-to-be-former officials over to some Third Party who might want to take an international legal interest in them. At the least, we need to put the word and practice before the American public without apology. We need to force people to see and understand the ugliest reality of the Bush years - and offer ways for us to atone for this collective crime.
Virtual Tin Cup
