Stoopid Stuff

And then there were...

Ariel Sharon in a coma. Henry Kissinger living high, enjoying his sunset years. Mladić is still free, but he is merely the thug, the triggerman, ultimately just a coarse murderer who doesn't matter. I suppose, in the fullness of time, we'll add the names of George Bush and Dick Cheney to the list of the brutal genocidal killers not of people, but of generations, to this sad list of late twentieth and twentyfirst century madmen. But tonight, Radovan Karadžić is in custody, en route to The Hague to stand trial.

No, not Feith, Wolfowitz, Yoo or Powell, enablers have to occupy a lower rung on the ladder of responsibility and accountability. There are many with blood on their hands. They are legion, and we are angered by the unseemly rush they indulged in to murder, to torture, to rape. Like Mladić, they carried out the horrible crimes, they led their men to put the muzzles of their rifles against the necks of their unarmed countrymen and shoot them over open mass graves, but they have an order of magnitude lesser responsibility.

For these decisions, these strategies, are formulated not in the mud of the field, but rather in paneled rooms, over polished oak conference tables, with telephones and PowerPoint presentations.

No. It is the design of these crimes, the decisions to bring them to fruition, the hideous calculation that it is murder, and forced displacement, and torture and rape that will yield the desired outcome that must be challenged, and called to account. It is for others, later, to hunt down and punish the murderers, the rapists, the torturers. For if our society is to mean anything, if it is to be seen as something other than a protective veneer for our most base instincts, it must stand up and speak a resonating NO to those that would use our civilization as nothing more than a cover for their ugly, predatory hatreds.

Politics and public policy are the way we, as humans, have come to understand how we define and advance our societies. They are frequently in conflict, and often are utterly incompatible. Sometimes those disagreements and incompatibilities result in conflict. All these things, stupid and wasteful though they are, are part and parcel of the modern way of life we have established.

But there are lines. And the extent we collectively allow those lines to be crossed is a very good way to define and describe the healthfulness of our global society.

Tonight, I'll sleep well knowing this architect of brutality of the highest order will not be living unchallenged, in wealth and comfort, but rather in a cell in the Hague, contemplating not just his crimes, but his impending mortality.

Sharon sleeps. Kissinger laughs. Justice waits.

But Radovan Karadžić has lost his freedom. It's something...

posted by mikey @ 6:23 PM