These days, everyone with a modicum of brains or a semi-operational moral compass seems to be contemplating their erstwhile support of or opposition to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Wars.
Notable exceptions exist, most conspicuously Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, (not to mention their inner circle of counselors, stooges and court jesters), but honestly, no one should be nonplussed by that. I did inject a qualifier with that “brains OR moral compass” thing.
I’m pleased the hand-wringing is finally occurring, but at the same time, I’m not impressed. Not a bloody whit. (I find myself in keen agreement with Charles Pierce in this regard.) The reason behind my incredulity is quite simple: The wringing of hands and rending of garments mean nothing. Truly and absolutely nothing. Why do I hold such a jaundiced and unsympathetic view? That, too, is quite simple:
When it comes to war, we do not learn from our mistakes; whether by outright, jingoistic refusal, or simple dumb-assedness, we, the Village, do not learn.
Some of us Villagers, as individuals, eventually assimilate the enormity of our errors, and in time douse our heart-searing fires. But our Village — the whole lot of us — does not. The proof of that odious pudding, if you care to eat it, is the fact we forever continue to place callow, ambitious, greedy, soulless, ignorant people, (yes, usually men), in positions of power over us. And when these people make the horrific choices they are seemingly ordained and hard-wired to make, they will not ever, of their own accord, wring their hands and scrutinize the depravity of their behavior.
Perhaps a long-term, not of their own accord, inspirational bout of Spandau fever would arouse and embolden a penitential spirit; but anything short of that?
Don’t hold your breath.
This is why our refusal to learn is important:
I’m going to illustrate a significant convergence, courtesy of John Venn. For those unfamiliar with his clever device, a Venn diagram is nothing more than a set of circles that overlap each other at points of logical relations. Imagine, if you will, two circles, one labeled “Jesus”, and the other, “Mother Theresa”. Think of the things they had in common: Love, mercy, compassion, humility, etc. Those things would be listed in the space where the two circles converge. Now think of the things they did not have in common: Gender, centuries in which they lived, life-spans, geographic locations, etc. Those things would be listed in the spaces where the circles did not converge. A Venn diagram is helpful when one wishes to find commonality, or a relationship between two or more things.
Now I’m going to put some teeth into the illustration.
Imagine three circles that slightly overlap, one is labeled George W. Bush, one is Dick Cheney, and the other is Donald Rumsfeld. Let’s first come up with a few things they don’t have in common:
1. Age? Yes. Bush was born in 1946; Cheney in 1941; Rumsfeld in 1932.
2. Education? Yes. Bush was educated at Yale and Harvard; Cheney graduated from the Univ. of Wyoming; Rumsfeld is a Princeton alumnus.
I know you already get the idea. Go ahead and list those things in each man’s individual circle.
Now let’s consider a few things these men have in common:
1. Gender? Yes. Duh.
2. Ethnicity? Yes, apparently all three are caucasian.
3. Government service? Yes. Bush was President, twice; Cheney, Vice-President, twice; Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense, thrice.
4. Primarily responsible for initiating and prosecuting two wars? Yes. No one in the American government possessed higher authority than these three men.
5. Primarily responsible for massively expanding the size and scope of our government? Yes. (See #4, above.)
6. As the highest ranking authorities in the American government, and clearly responsible for the American military invasion and occupation of Irag and Afghanistan, are the deaths of over one-hundred thousand people ultimately attributable to the actions and command decisions of these three men? Yes.
Okay, to simplify things, let’s erase the first five items in the list and just keep #6. To further simplify things, let’s just label it, “Responsible for > 100,000 deaths”, then combine the three names onto a new Venn circle and append the label.
So now we have a circle with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld at the top, and “Responsible for > 100,000 deaths” inside the circle.
Hmmm . . . let’s think about a few other people with Venn circles that might overlap at that particular point.
1. Franklin Roosevelt and Winnie Churchill? Of course. But let’s get real. Being ultimately responsible (as the leader of your nation) for a massive number of deaths while desperately beating back a brutal, sadistic, world-invading axis is more than a slightly different situation than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld encountered. Seriously, if you think the circumstances were even closely comparable, we can pack up and go home right now. This Venn circle gets tossed out.
2. Joe Stalin? You bet. Yes, he, like Roosevelt and Churchill, led his nation against Nazi invaders, but Ol’ Joe was a despotic mass-murderer long before (and after) Hitler came calling. His responsibility for mass death existed irrespective of WWII, and his tally is, allegedly, exceeded by only one man. This Venn stays.
3. Pol Pot? Yes. The brutality of his regime continued long after any “American aggression” excuse remained.
4. Saddam Hussein? Without question.
5. Bashar al-Assad? Probably not. Yet. Probably, if you include his father, Hafez al-Assad.
6. Mao Zedong? If all the evidence is true, Chairman Mao rests comfortably at the top of this hellish list, and is responsible for the democidal deaths of (possibly) 60 million people.
7. Adolf Hitler? If you need to ask, you live under a rock.
8. Kim Jong-il? Probable. Mostly through incarceration within concentration camps or prisons, not through war.
Enough of that list. Sadly, it could go on and on. But an interesting thing to note is that, when compared to the number of people living on the planet at any given time, the number of men — it’s always men — responsible for more than 100,000 deaths is a minuscule fraction of the total number of people who have ever lived.
As an aside, can you imagine having that statistic as one of your life’s accomplishments? The brutal deaths of over 100,000 people? Not by your own hands, mind you, (not many can claim that), but because of orders you gave. When it came right down to it, in effect, you pointed and said, “Kill!”
Really. You did that.
Just imagine.
Now, let’s make just one more Venn circle, shall we? This one will be labeled: “Of the men responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, who has been prosecuted and convicted of that horrific crime against humanity?”.
While you contemplate the answer and drum your fingers on the table, let me slide a sheaf of legal records under your nose. As you will no doubt note, they’re dated 1945-1949, and they’re from Nürnberg, Germany.
The only people responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, who have been prosecuted and convicted.
How does that happen?
I would love to be proven wrong. Take your best shot.
And all this is why our refusal to learn is so damnably important.
