"Another way he still haunts me is that I cannot help reading the investigation into his murder and the prosecution of his killers as a commentary on his life’s work, even though his life’s work had nothing to do with his killing. For his death to have a meaning beyond brutal chance — wrong place, wrong time — requires this magical turn in thinking: that the bombing is the central event in a symbolic drama of good and evil in which he and his murderers are the players. And for this thinking to make sense on its own terms, justice has to be universal, operating outside the bounds of circumstance. It must be fated. It must not admit contingency."
"Since the Nuremberg trials, it has been a principle of international law that crimes legitimized by a state bureaucracy are still crimes. At the same time, political philosophers since Hobbes have argued that justice requires a sovereign — only under a legitimate authority can there be any faith that justice will be enforced consistently. But there is no global sovereign, just a balance of national powers. The American government has a chance to hold someone accountable for those crimes after so many years, just as my father did. Even if this accountability is a product of a certain place and time, and even if others deserve it more, our prerogative as a superpower is to demand it."
No comments:
Post a Comment