We are past the time of the Good German. We’re even past asking who might be a Bad German.
The Reckoning has begun.
We forget how The Reckoning can begin before the war ends. In Germany The Reckoning began long before the Soviets entered Berlin. It was in full swing at the time of the 1944 plot against Hitler (a plot in which I recently learned a distant relative (right) participated).
So it has begun here, with George W. Bush still in office. The great hope of the Administration, the fact that will keep W’s butt out of jail, is to show Democrats’ complicity.
Democrats were complicit. Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were apparently briefed on torture and stood silent. The CIA’s insistence it acted within the law, that it it was only following orders, Mein Herr, is more evidence that the search for conspirators is well under way.
Essentially our Congressional leaders are being blackmailed, in the full light of day, by the regime’s leaders. Protect us and you won’t be hurt, they say. And these leaders are knuckling under.
In 2006 the cry was for more Democrats. Today the cry must go out for better Democrats. Despite the risk which our major media (which is also fully complicit in torture, in war crimes, and in the theft of this nation’s Constitution) will claim exists, Democrats need to wage war on their fellow Democrats, right now. Netroots Democrats must demand that those Democrats whowere complicit in these crimes be held to account, in order that those Republicans who engaged in criminal conduct be held to account.
What is at stake is our own complicity in these crimes. Your complicity. My complicity.
Until the truth comes out, all of it, and until those who shredded our Constitution and committed war crimes are identified — if not punished — then all of us are complicit in those crimes. This was the case for South Africa. This remains the case for Serbia. This was the case for Germany and Japan after World War II.
That Reckoning is now at hand for us.
Until we have engaged in this Reckoning, we are all guilty in the eyes of the world. Until we engage this painful process, we have no moral standing, no credibility, no right to cry freedom or democracy or anything else, save power, to a world which needs us.
There is ample precedent for this, in our own Reconstruction. That work was halted in 1876, and it was America’s shame for nearly a century later that it was halted, even reversed.
America’s standing in the world today is zero. Its credibility is zero. No one will step in to save our currency. No one will step in to save us from the fate of Argentina, of Brazil, of all those nations which committed suicide at their own hands. Many, many will cheer our suffering.
We, The People must step in. We must step in now, and we must stay in, until the job is finished. Our future as a nation, and our childrens ability to engage in the future work of the world, is at stake.
I will repeat what I have said here many times. There is no statute of limitations for war crimes. There is no immunity. History grants no pardon. And those who cover up such crimes become complicit, become conspirators after the fact.
This was the point Marlene Dietrich made so powerfully through her performance in the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg. Dietrich, a genuine American war heroine who gave her Paris apartment over to refugees before it fell, and who entertained so close to the front during the war she had to be commissioned, played the widow of a Nazi officer in that movie, repeatedly claiming "no one knew" about the camps, "how could we have known about such things."
A common sentiment, then and now. And the most monstrous villainy. Not so monstrous, of course, as that of Burt Lancaster’s Ernst Jannings. And so the question occurs:
Who will you be? What will your descendants say of you?
Oh, and that man at the top of this post? Herbert Blankenhorn was a Nazi, but he was rehabilitated when his involvement in the 1944 plot against Hitler was brought to light. He entered the government of Konrad Adenauer. He helped negotiate the agreement with France which began the Common Market, in the mid-1950s. A decade later, as Ambassador to Great Britain, he helped shepherd that country’s entrance into the European Community. He became one of many godfathers for today’s European Union.
Had my father or uncles, who wore U.S. uniforms during that war, ever met up with Herbert they would have killed him, killed him gladly. But history looks more kindly on that face now, despite his crimes.
What will history say of you?
