Yesterday would have been Robert F. Kennedy’s 80th birthday. It was also the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials. And today’s NYTimes carried a story of the three Republican Senators, led by John McCain, who are putting anti-torture amendments in budget bills.
The only thing fellow Republicans had to say about McCain was that he was handing "Democrats an opening to politicize the Iraq war." Meanwhile, we torture people around the world with no due process and with the full approval of some. We're sponsoring death squads in Iraq that are conducting "disappearances" of political opponents. The President’s advisor exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband’s criticism of the war. And the Bush Administration has recently launched a campaign to paint opponents to the war as unpatriotic.
Robert Kennedy said that violence starts when we objectify our opponents:
When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies---to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
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We learn to share only a common fear--only a common desire to retreat from each other--only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force...The question is whether we can find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
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We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be enobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.
Are we creating a better society and a better world with the ferocity with which we paint our opponents as lesser beings? Will Americans sixty years from now look away in shame or embarrassment at our actions today? How do we get from this place of turning moral issues into ways to win, and our opponents into lesser beings who we are justified in torturing and killing? How do we instead begin to have honest discussions about the kind of country we want to create and be? How do we "find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose?"
