I've been trying to read all the finalists for the Koufax Awards. During that effort I found Jeanne d'Arc's essay from which the photo and the excerpts below come, posted in May of 2004. It resonated after this from last week, which is about the autopsy results of the man referenced in the essay who was tortured by the CIA.
The torture hasn't stopped, and isn't going to stop. It leaves me wondering about evil: at what point does a person or a government or a society become evil, and how does it recover from it? Have the Germans recovered from the evil they did in WWII? How many generations did it take? And it makes me sad. For us, and for those who are being tortured and killed by us, because we're afraid, or arrogant, or both.
Body and Soul: And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
I can't remember where I read or heard it, but in response to the suggestion that the MPs at Abu Ghraib were untrained, not even aware of the Geneva Conventions, someone snarled, "How much do you have to know about the Geneva Conventions to know that it's wrong to wire someone's genitals?"
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When it became clear that the "boys will be boys (and sometimes even girls will be boys)" spin had frozen mid-pirouette, the new story was introduced: Damn those idiots who make the rest of our brave men and women look bad.
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The most important thing to remember about the crucifixion of Jesus is not that it sullied the reputation of all the good Roman soldiers.
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Perhaps we shy away from this deeper recognition of individual moral agency because it has such far reaching consequences. When we deny another's moral agency, we help to create the conditions for denying our own. If we start talking about individual responsibility when it comes to soldiers, how long is it before we discover our own individual responsibility when it comes to war, colonialism, disproportionate consumption, racism, ecological damage, global poverty and hunger, millions of dead children who lacked simple drugs.
Read the entire entry, which was a finalist for Best Post in the Koufax Awards.
PS: The Koufax Awards are done by Wampum, which had to purchase additional bandwidth because of their effort this year. Help out with a contribution if you can.
