I wish we could start prosecutions like Nuremberg's once we topple the Venezuelan regime that has brought so much misery to our country. It is unbelievable how so many corrupt politicians are living large around the world and no country ever asks them about their billions of dollars in sudden fortunes, their yachts, ferraris and multiple properties. They have stolen trillions of dollars in almost two decades, but this is not only about the money, also the millions of displaced and hundreds of thousands killed at the hands of paramilitary motorized gangs armed and supported by the dictatorship.
There won't be closure until we hunt them down everywhere they hide, and the whole world has become much more smaller thanks to the internet.
I'm not sure how you can equate a corrupt money stealing government with a genocidal regime in which tens of millions of people were killed, imprisoned, and made refugees; while also drawing all the super powers into a protracted and bloody war, arguably we are still feeling the effects of today.
Dozens of Venezuelans are murdered every day as a result of the Government's inability to maintain even the minimal facade of law in order in many parts of the country. I'm not sure how many people have to die, and how many others have to live in misery, so clearly caused by corruption, before the world acts against the leaders responsible. There has to be some standard, but I think that Venezuela has met it.
I can't possibly add anything to the story, provide additional insight or historical reference. All I can do is to be profoundly thankful that there are people like Ben Ferencz in the world and hope that, in my own small way, I'm leaving the planet a bit better than I found it.
The article summarizes his life, and how he got to be a prosecutor at Nuremberg, which is a fascinating read.
The baity title probably refers to this fragment:
Lesley Stahl: Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise in your opinion have been just a normal, upstanding citizen?
Benjamin Ferencz: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite--
Lesley Stahl: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?
Benjamin Ferencz: He's not a savage. He's an intelligent, patriotic human being.
Lesley Stahl: He's a savage when he does the murder though.
Benjamin Ferencz: No. He's a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.
Lesley Stahl: You don't think they turn into savages even for the act?
Benjamin Ferencz: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.
So Ferencz has spent the rest of his life trying to deter war and war crimes by establishing an international court – like Nuremberg. He scored a victory when the international criminal court in The Hague was created in 1998. He delivered the closing argument in the court's first case.
We're all just people, yeah? Out there, somewhere is a rational reason for why people do the things they do. I'm not defending these actions, but if we could truly and completely empathize - we would understand.
There's no shortage in history of episodes where people have been irrational, selfish, bigoted.
Stalin and Pol Pot were just people, slave-owners were just people, inquisitors were just people, witch-burning villagers were people...
It doesn't take that much imagination to put oneself in their shoes... and see that it's largely greed, small-mindedness, or stupidity that explain what they did.
Greed, small-mindedness, and stupidity are as much a part of human nature, as generosity, open-mindedness, and cleverness. Regardless, any society in which I'd want to live promotes the latter.
If you believe they are being rational, then we must change that calculus. That's why we send them to prison--doing so discourages other people from doing the same.
Yeah I think we always at least ought to try to understand.
There may be things that are not understandable, but, when we give it our best shot we can say we tried.
In many cases, I imagine the SS officer may have had a gun pointed to his head himself. That certainly was the case in Cambodia. If a soldier didn't kill someone who he was ordered to kill, he would be shot himself.
If we can keep tensions low and communicate better I believe we can at least forestall further world wars.
SS officers didn't really have a gun pointed to their heads. They could refuse.
But it was the combination of the difficulty of saying no to authority and probably peer pressure , together with the reasonable possibility they'll be sent to the front lines (not even as a punishment , but because that's what men did back than).
If it's a choice between those ten people and me, I probably choose me.
If it's a choice between a n+1 people and me, I guess I've already done n, what's another one?
Acknowledging that there is a difference between being sent away to war and certain death. That there's a difference between 1 more person and a hundred. I believe that far more people than we'd like to admit would just follow orders.
A poet (Polish?) once said that "one million and one is still one million" (IIRC he was talking about Stalin rulings and the number of victims, and that a single life does not weight much in such times, but I am not sure)
There won't be closure until we hunt them down everywhere they hide, and the whole world has become much more smaller thanks to the internet.