History Isn't a Judge, but Time Is an Executioner

Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been holding hearings on the administration’s negotiations with Iraq over the legal status of American troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush’s presidency. He said that the administration had rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to Congress for approval, and had largely succeeded.

“They’re excellent at manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should assert itself, members expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough enough on terrorism,” he said. “My view is history is going to judge us all.”

-The Times

Somewhere even as we speak someone is being tortured for Bill Delahunt, but hey, at least no one will accuse him of being soft on terrorism. I recall Susan Sontag giving an interview to Kurt Anderson, one of the many etherizing occupants of NPR studios, just after her book Regarding the Pain of Others came out, and there was a moment when her voice nearly raised and you could almost hear her rising out of her seat: "These are human beings who do this," she said, speaking of certain unspeakable horrors that arrive inevitably with war. "We have to stop being surprised!"

In other words, the work of historians is largely obfuscatory. Nazi Germany, how could it happen? Reams and reams and reams and libraries and films and monuments and museums, but as you can see above, the question, more accurately put, would be: Nazi Germany, how could it not have happened. Martin Niemöller, requiescat in pace.