Glenn Greenwald's article from The Intercept is entitled.

"Trump’s War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised." I link it below


My Comment: My yardstick for the morality in war has always been the Holocaust. More than the oft counted innocent Jewish dead of 6 million the more probable number was 10 million shot, tortured, medical experimented on, "living" in appalling conditions, diseased, starved and worked to death or sent to gas chambers -- men, women and children alike. The number is so large that either six or ten does not matter. What matters is the morality of either number. If one counts the dead in the entire theater of World War II a number more on the order of 50 million is fact. Add to that terrible number the destruction of history's once most beautiful geographical landscapes and the cost becomes incalculable. Man's inhumanity to other men knows no boundaries.

The most important question for me is what did WWII teach us if anything. The massive incalculable loss must have meaning or all those deaths are in vain. It taught me that there is an obligation for each of us to say no to those acts or orders that are so barbaric and so cruel where the powerful target the innocent powerless simply because they can. This must be eschewed and for me, has universal applicability whether the life is Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Iraqi or anyone else. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography "I know it when I see it" so in war or in any human interaction I know immoral barbaric acts when I see them.

The film "Judgement at Nuremberg" focused on prosecuting the Nazi hierarchy for the atrocities they committed. The film of those atrocities was actual footage taken from the concentration camps and shown to the courtroom. A most poignant scene occurred outside of the courtroom, however, when one American judge excused the German perpetrators with the I-was-just-following-orders excuse. Richard Widmark, the Allied prosecutor of these crimes, said to him what I thought was the essence of the film and the gravitational force which should guide us all. He answered: "Just what was this war about anyway, just what was it the hell about?"

I know immorality when I see it indeed!



https://theintercept.com/2017/03/26/trumps-war-on-terror-has-quickly-become-as-barbaric-and-savage-as-he-promised/