The Complicity Guy Has Spoken

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The Nuremberg Retributions were one of the lowest points in 20th century history.  The aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for looking ahead, not for laying blame for the past. Unfortunately, too many people failed to understand that well-intentioned Germans accused of war crimes were just following orders and acting in good faith.  Those dedicated patriots in the Whermacht and hard working public servants in the SS were men of integrity, they didn’t shirk their responsibility to keep the German homeland safe from Jewish, Polish, Russian, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, French, British, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, American, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian, Canadian and Belgian fanatics, extremists, and non-combatants.

Unlike 50 million human beings, this Dedicated Defender of the Homeland Paradigm survived the Second World War.  With a vengeance.  It was alive and well in Bush and Cheney’s White House, and it’s alive and well in Obama’s White House.  Take notes everyone, that patriotic act in the photo wasn’t a war crime, it was just defending the homeland . . .

I’ve learned recently that the aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for reflection, not retribution.  Everyone should have respected the strong views and emotions of Germans who defended their country through a war crime or two, just as much as they respected the strong views and emotions of the people whose loved ones were executed and dumped in a ditch, bombed, tortured, gassed, burned in ovens, and condemned as subhuman parasites unfit to exist.

But vengeance prevailed over common sense.  Retribution was insisted upon by persecutors waving the “rule of law” in everyone’s face, they rambled on and on and on about “justice” but all they were really after was payback and revenge.  So many German children who loved their dedicated fathers had to watch with tears in their eyes while their fathers were slandered in the newspapers and demonized by finger pointing trial lawyers parading around for the newsreel cameras.        

The world had been through a dark and painful chapter in its history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity between those guilty of war crimes and their victims, people should have realized that nothing would be gained by spending time and energy laying blame for the past. Germans made some well-intentioned mistakes, like invading 28 countries, and Jews made some well-intentioned mistakes, like being born Jewish.    

It just goes to show that none of us is perfect, so why did so many people want to point fingers? Every single person who died in that war would have died at some point anyway, so why were so many people so outraged that well-intentioned Germans defending their homes and families efficiently bombed cities and torpedoed ships and organized camps so people could die together companionably instead of wasting away alone in some nursing home in 1983?

Was that so wrong?

A famous Jewish advocate of forgiveness and brotherhood once said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  But did that lynch mob of activist judges at Nuremberg listen to him?  No.  They threw stones of retribution, they threw stones of vengeance, they stoned the daylights out of patriotic Germans who may have hazed a few prisoners now and then but who meant well, and showed no mercy to the dedicated public servants of Himmler and Eichmann, who were just obeying the orders they got and just passed them along to other dedicated public servants at Treblinka, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau.      

Who would want to look back at that and reopen old wounds?  Who would want to look back and lay blame when it was so important to look ahead to genocide in the Sudan and genocide in Cambodia and genocide in Rwanda and wars of aggression in Korea and Vietnam and East Timor and the Middle East and the Balkans and Chechniya and Iraq?  

The self-righteous persecutors of Nuremberg, that’s who.  They had this silly fucking idea that prosecuting and convicting powerful politicians and generals who launched wars of aggression and ordered torture had some sort of moral justification.  

They must have thought the world might finally change for the better if someone always stood up for justice, confronted powerful men with overwhelming evidence of their crimes, and sent them to prison. What a bunch of sanctimonious purists.  Thank God those naive jackasses aren’t here today embarrassing everyone with their quaint HOPE that the world might CHANGE if leaders said YES WE CAN when justice cried out for the prosecution of powerful warmongering criminals and their torturers, spies, and Constitution burning hacks.          

Fortunately for current and future war criminals, President Obama is much more sophisticated than those Nuremberg dolts.  He realizes that the great and inspiring national greatness of great and national nations is embedded in their ability to ignore their core values when doing otherwise would get complicated, and to move forward with confidence in their limitless capacity for hypocrisy and moral cowardice.  

So just chill out, everyone, especially you pot-smoking, petition-signing, far left, dirty fucking hippie bloggers.  As the Complicity Guy says, we must resist engaging in vengeance like those Nuremburg finger pointers did, we must overcome the forces that divide lawbreakers in the political, military, and intelligence establishments from the rest of us who respect the law, and instead come together and be grateful that we live in this Shining City on a Hill where no one is above the law except torturers, Wall Street bankers, war profiteers, NSA spies, and Republican politicians.