April 23, 2006

04/23/06 "ICH" -- --

I have often asked myself why human beings have any rights at all. I always come to the conclusion that human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values are as powerful as they are because, under certain circumstances, people accept them without compulsion and are willing to die for them. - Vaclav Havel

The following notice was nailed to the gate of the American prisoner-of-war camp at Babenhausen/Darmstadt in 1946:

"When you, SS-man Willi Schulze, or you, Corporal Rudi Muller, stride out through this gate, your steps will lead you to freedom. Behind you lie months and years of slavish obedience, years of bloodshed, years in which human individuality suffered incredible humiliations, all of which was caused by a criminal regime whose adherents will not escape due punishment.

You yourself are not to blame. Deluded, you blindly followed the call of a false doctrine. From now on your life in your family circle can unfold free and undisturbed. You have been freed from accursed military service, from guilt-laden German militarism. Never again will a shrill command chase you across the barracks courts or drive you to the battlefield. The ashes of your army ID card have mingled with those of Buchenwald and Dachau.

The victorious United Nations which, through their great sacrifice, have freed you and your descendants forever from military service, have assumed the responsibility of protecting your freedom. But in exchange for that great sacrifice you are duty-bound to make sure that never again in your homeland will a desire for military service arise, that never again will young Germans sacrifice the best years of their lives to the hankerings of the Prussian nobility and their war-thirsty general staff, but that they will, from now on, dedicate their strength and their gifts to peaceful ends. - Signed: U.S. War Department"

How times have changed! How things have remained the same! 50 years after this sign was posted we no longer have a U.S. War Department; we Americans now have a Department of Defense. However, the sameness comes in considering that for we Americans "Behind us lie months and years of slavish obedience, years of bloodshed, years in which human individuality suffered incredible humiliations, all of which was caused by a criminal regime whose adherents will not escape due punishment". The irony of the comparison to our own situation in America is easily seen if one substitutes "Bush nobility" for "Prussian nobility" and is further magnified by considering that those who suffered most (the Jews) from the "criminal regime" in Nazi Germany are today most responsible for engineering and fomenting the suffering and humiliation of others (the Arabs and Palestinians) through Israeli aggression and the same type suppression they suffered under Hitler. Israeli purchase and exploitation of the entire American political system [1][2] for the purposes of financial aide and fighting their wars and then spying on and working against their benefactors, the United States, [3] only adds to the bitterness of the irony.

In 1946, we Americans could see that the suffering of millions of people and the death of 6 million Jews was the fault of Nazi Germany's leaders. Today we see that it is the fault of the Rudi Muller's and the Willie Schulze's of our armed forces who are responsible for the suffering of their prisoners. It is the Rudis and Willies who are responsible for using "Willie Pete" for night- time "illumination" of civilian areas and snipers to establish "free fire" zones in Falluja. It is "they" who are responsible for the radioactive contamination of an entire country and the radioactive contamination of themselves and their comrades with depleted uranium. It is "they" who decided to drop cluster bombs on civilian targets. It was not OUR LEADERS who were responsible for the disappearance of 8.8 billion dollars in Iraqi reconstruction funds or the 60 percent increase in world oil prices since the invasion of a virtually powerless country. It was not OUR LEADERS who invaded and destroyed a sovereign nation on false pretenses. It is not OUR LEADERS who are responsible for the rendition of real, imagined and purchased enemies using carefully camouflaged CIA planes for their transport into the nether world of carefully hidden CIA prisons. It is not OUR LEADERS who are preparing to invade Iran because it wants to exercise the same freedom of choice OUR LEADERS made for us when WE began the Manhattan Project.

How can we spoiled Americans have forefathers who fought a world war to stop the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and Communists and then wind up with a president whose grandfather helped Hitler rise to power and invested in the company which manufactured the Zyklon B Gas used to kill these "undesirables"? This is a mystery that shows many things about turning wheels and the "smallness" of the world.

This is a study of how we Americans changed from a proud people into a herd of sheep that are only waiting for the order to "strip and step into the showers. What happened to us? Why do we refuse to learn from history? How similar are we to those who put their clothes and valuables into neat piles before stepping into the "showers" of the 40's? What dichotomy allows our American military to act like Hitler's SS troops and their parents to be so weak that they allow their president to assume dictatorial powers without giving so much as a whimper? How can we believe the 9/11 fantasy constructed for us by our leaders (sic) and not believe we are presently living in a land with little freedom and no privacy from government surveillance? How can we listen to a demagogue like Alan Dershowitz extol the necessity of using torture on our "enemies" while trumpeting the fact that he lost 40 family members in the holocaust?

To reach some answers, this article will go back to pre-war Nazi Germany and examine the character and the way of life of 10 average German citizens living in Germany who were caught up in or volunteered for the Nazi movement and assumed roles in the movement as it germinated under Hitler and grew to the ending described by the 1946 sign over the gate at Babenhausen/Darmstadt. This examination and comparison will use as reference the 1955 Milton Meyer book, "They Thought They Were Free".

Then:

One of the more telling aspects of the transition from "normal" German life into the world of German Nazism was the realization by "our" 10 German citizens that there were no clear-cut dramatic changes in German life. Life changed imperceptibly as rules were gradually changed. There was a widening gap between the government and the people. People became very gradually accustomed to government by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret, to believing that situations were so complicated that "normal" people couldn't properly understand or that the "situation" had to be handled in secret for "national security reasons". Additionally, each step in the transformation of German life was disguised to create the illusion of a common, grand threat to all which could only be discovered, interpreted and handled by the government.

In Germany, the government gradually increased the "required" participation by the individual in the government's grand design(s). There was required attendance at various government functions, forms to be completed, lists to be compiled, etc, etc. There was no time to think or reflect.

Now:

In today's America, required participation in government- sponsored activities is not the central aspect of family life. Our participation in the life of the community and in the life of the family is a part of the ever increasing speed of the "squirrel's exercise wheel". Today's "soccer mom" is forced to run faster and faster just to remain "in place".

The result of these phenomena (coupled with today's mind-destroying television) is and was that for even those who were and are prone to "think" for themselves, there is and was less and less time for such a luxury. For those few who tend and tended to think about the basics of life, there is also the government created diversions concerning national enemies to distract from any serious effort in that direction. Germans as well as Americans cannot be relied upon to tolerate activities that outrage the normal sense of decency unless the selected victims are stigmatized in advance. Governments can be relied upon to perform this function and thereby mobilize its citizens toward the government's desired goals. There are always red, yellow or purple alert levels to keep us "in the mood" because uncertainty is a very important part of the "plan".

Then:

Then as now, if one accidentally finds one to whom he can express his fears, he is labeled an "alarmist" or told that he "is seeing things" or that "things aren't so bad". One tends to have fewer and fewer friends in whom he can confide or converse freely. Besides, how does one oppose? What is his reason? Opposition depends upon circumstances.

"The few who tried to kill Hitler in '44, certainly . . . 'opposed' But why? Some hated the dictatorship of National Socialism, some hated its democracy, some were personally ambitious or jealous, some wanted the Army to control the country, maybe some could escape punishment for crimes only by a change of government. Some, I am sure, were pure and noble. But they all acted . . .

Well, we had twenty thousand people . . . If you ask me how many did something in secret opposition, something that meant great danger to them, I would say, well, twenty. And how may did something like that openly and from good motives alone? Maybe five, maybe two. That's the way men are". [4]

Living in this environment of uncertainty it is impossible to notice change. Each step is so small and inconsequential that change goes unnoticed.

"When the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing, and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something -- but then it was too late". [5]

Then and Now:

Uncertainty is very important to the government. One doesn't see where or exactly how to move. One keeps waiting for the one "great event" that will trigger an appropriate response within oneself. But the "big event" never comes. One doesn't want to talk or act alone. Standing alone is not the only restraining factor; uncertainty is certainly an important factor. Life is not a series of isolated events; life is more a flow of continuing events and change comes very slowly. We no longer see spying on Americans inside the United States as an important event. It is just one of a series of outrages that seems no larger than the hundreds that went before. One lie is no larger than the ones that went before and brought us into a war of aggression aimed at another country's resources.

Today we are outraged by the "news" that our government has been spying on Americans in the United States for the last year or so. (The truth is that spying on Americans is so commonplace to our government and has been going on so long that "spying" hardly even rates a raised eyebrow at this point).

Another factor common to Nazi Germany and our present American Way is the small number of people required to change a whole country from a free, prosperous land envied by all into one hated and despised by the whole world - but not for our prosperity. How many people did it take to change our country's goals and its perception by others: Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Luty, Perle, Rumsfeld, and a few "movers and shakers in the business world. How many "do nothings" did it take to allow this to happen? Answer. At last count, 535 members of Congress and almost 290 million Americans. And how many Americans have resisted our slide into totalitarianism and oblivion? At last count there were two - Kevin Benderman and Cindy Sheehan. (Oh yes, there have been more who have protested in marches and others who have hurled "word bombs" from the safety of "our" computer keyboards at the criminals guiding our descent into chaos and oblivion, but only these two have taken their convictions "to the mat" or more correctly, "to the jails and prisons" for all of us).

Conclusions:

And after the war - the Big One - WWII. What did the average German feel? Was it remorse? shame? guilt? Yes, some Germans felt all three. But within the majority was an underlying hypocrisy. Although some confessed that their government's actions were terrible, few were able to say that the actions of their government "violated the precepts of Christian, civilized, lawful life"[6] and even fewer were able to say that "I" knew it was wrong when it was happening and "I" knew it was un-Christian, uncivilized and unlawful and "I" pretended it wasn't.

Does this sound vaguely familiar? Did Abu Ghraib sound un-Christian, uncivilized and unlawful to we Americans or did it sound like a sophomoric college prank? Did the second set of photos from Abu Ghraib, which were finally released to the public after having been screened and judged by our lawmakers to be so graphically horrific that the American public should not be allowed to see them, goad we Americans into finding who was REALLY responsible, impeaching the responsible party and trying his underlings for war crimes? Did the description of the destruction of Fallujah seem right to us? Did we Americans try to pry open the CIA's rendition operation and prosecute all the way to the gas chamber those responsible for rendition and torture and black prisons? No, because we know that those responsible would not be able to wage wars of any type - aggression, defense or entertainment - in the future in our names. We know that wars of aggression are "necessary" for our comfort and survival. We know that without the occasional, necessary war we won't be able to take the family on the annual vacation in the safety of the family SUV. Fighting the terrorists "over there" is better than having to drill off our own pristine coasts and find our own oil. Is this realization one of hypocrisy, self-delusion, convenience or self-preservation?



References:

[1] www.wrmea.com/crchives'jun2003/0306036
[2] www.counterpunch.com/cook04152006.html
[3] www.counterpunch.org/husseini08302004.html
[4] "They Thought They Were Free", page 93,
[5] page 169.
[6] page 184.

Nolan K. Anderson is a retired engineer and a veteran of Korea who was once a "conservative" until he found there was nothing left to conserve and as a veteran hates to see a tour in Korea go to waste. (He may be reached at nkanders@bellsouth.net).

Copyright Nolan K. Anderson