Looking backwards, moving forwards
To investigate or not to investigate
The New York Times reports this morning that political pressure on President Obama to investigate Bush-era wrongdoings — from civilian casualities during Afghanistan to torture — has intensified. During the wee hours today, Reuters also reported that Germany has formally charged 89 year old John Demjanjuk, who allegedly served in the Sobibor death camp during World War II, aiding and abetting the deaths of 28,000.
Although the contrasts between the Nazi holocaust and the conduct alleged to have occurred during the war on terror are stunningly obvious, the similarities should not be dismissed. Both cases concern state-sanctioned and state-implemented violence. And in both cases the violence is argued to be beyond the pale–not justified by any national necessity.
Finally, and perhaps most centrally, both cases raise the question how to assign responsibility between the functionary who carried out the criminal act and the bureacrats and leaders who allowed or even ordered it.
President Obama has attempted to shift attention away from Bush-era offenses by focusing on forwarding-looking, rather than backward-looking responsibility. He has emphasized the values that should and will guide America during his administration, while casting doubt on the efficacy of retributive measures against those who planned, permitted and ordered the use of coercive investigative techniques.
The president’s motives may reflect a real sensibility about how societies can productively confront state-criminality, but they may also stem from practical concerns. In the midst of big battles on heatlhcare and climate change, the third-rail of torture and national security threatens to derail the White House’s political momentum.
The German case has been different. In the early years after the war, retributive justice was imposed from the outside through the Nuremburg Trials. Yet the German state has continued to prosecute those who participated in the Holocaust (the most famous example being the Frankfurt Auscwitz Trials of the early 1960s). These efforts have had a mix reception. Some have felt that seeing justice done provides cathartic benefits to a nation torn and wracked by guilt. Others wonder how long will be “long enough” for Germans to move on.
Deciding how to address these kinds of crimes is more than a purely ethical problem, but that doesn’t make ethics irrelevant.
On the ethical side, the questions are first, what conduct is right and what wrong and, second, how to apportion responsibility. On the political side are the benefits and costs of action, particularly given the possibility that state legitimacy may be at stake.
–Sam
Related posts:
- Are guns covered in the public option?
- Guest Post: Responsibility in Rwanda
- No hall pass
- Community first?
- Palin, we hardly knew thee
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