Analysis by Shea Howell
Special to The Michigan Citizen
http://www.michigancitizen.com/
A new monument opens in Washington, D.C. this Memorial Day, honoring the sacrifices of Americans during World War II. The dedication of this memorial is an opportunity for all of us to remember the lives lost and changed forever by war.
It is also an opportunity to remember the questions that that war brought to the generations that followed. In many ways it was the probing of the World War II experience that compelled many of us to resist the use of military power in Korea and Vietnam.
Images from the Vietnam War inspired movements for disarmament and for limitations on the use of force as a means of settling international disagreements.
For many Americans, the fundamental question of World War II was how Germany, a country of sophistication and culture, could become such a brutal aggressor, controlled by a fascist dictator. The rise of Hitler to power, his uses of propaganda, of image, of blatant lying, intimidation and bullying were documented, debated, and dissected by subsequent generations.
In classrooms, bars, backyards, living rooms and kitchens people asked each other "How could this have happened?"
For many of us, the painful conclusion was summed up in the famous saying, that "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent." This notion became a call to action for subsequent generations.
It meant that every one of us who questioned the use of military power by our own government had an obligation to raise our voices against this abuse of power. We had an obligation to resist unjust wars. This obligation formed the bedrock belief of the anti-war movements in the United States for the next half century.
In the last two years, as George W. Bush has moved the world toward what seems like a call to perpetual war, this lesson is especially important. Techniques of propaganda, image control, lying, and bullying have all become more sophisticated. But so, too, has our understanding of the power and responsibilities of citizens to act collectively to change their governments.
Inextricably linked in our consciousness to the images of battlefields, bombers and PT-boats are the horrifying pictures of the Holocaust.
How could human beings do this to one another? How could seemingly ordinary people turn into monsters, torturing and murdering defenseless human beings?
As the world watched the war crimes trials documenting the horrors of concentration camps, a grim consensus emerged from those ashes. It became established as no defense to claim that one was just following orders. No matter our rank or position in life, individuals have a responsibility to act toward one another in accord with basic principles of human decency.
There is no excuse for carrying out orders that violate basic human rights. Those who order such actions, with whatever justifications, are criminals, subject to prosecution by international law.
Today, it seems the Bush administration has drawn lessons from the wrong side of World War II. It has become a diminished reflection of the Hitler regime rather than an heir to the democracies that gave so much to fight him.
Like Germany in the 1930s, the Bush administration ordered the invasion of a weak country without provocation. It has suspended civil liberties, defied international law and convention, and used advanced techniques of propaganda to distort truth. In the name of self-protection it has authorized torture and killing.
In the curious reversals of history that often mark the human experience, the United States that gave so much to stop the triumph of fascism in the last century has become a nation refining the essence of fascism in this one.
Now, the rest of us have to decide the responsibility we bear for the actions being done in our name.