Citizenship in times of belligerence

When one’s government is engaged in illegal actions, the moral imperative is to intervene. Especially when one's government is waging illegal war, the duty of the citizen is to oppose the war and to agitate for withdrawal from the invaded land.

I am continually brought to the issue that democracy requires moral assessment and action on the part of its citizens. Failure to respond to moral transgressions of one’s own values, ends in a devaluation of those values. When your leaders make war, the blood spilled stains our reputations and our society. Torture makes all of us torturers

People who disdain to use force in their private relations, sit idle while children are bombed and the peaceful citizens of a foreign land are terrorized and murdered. Upon becoming aware of the cause (namely a criminal government) many of these people accede to the crime by justifying it as “war”.

So the question keeps coming back, “What is the difference between us and the Germans of the late 1930’s and Second World War generation?”

[I find it to be small, whatever difference exists]

To not act, in the face of crimes, makes one heir to the evil produced. It is not possible to justify our means by the ends we wish to achieve. When our leaders accede to do wrong, we are just as much to blame and the wheels of history will revolve until we end up being crushed underneath them.

This is not said from a perch of moral superiority. This is a judgement directed at us all.

Once again we have lost our moral bearings and have become Criminal, at minimum we are Collaborators. Bush's 9/11 was the catalyst to an age of new horrors that will impact us all.

We , who CHOOSE to look away, to deny and to facilitate the horrors delivered daily to the unfortunate people of the lands invaded, are corrupted beyond our own recognition.

We, who CHOOSE to let our moral character be defined by the actions of criminals and murderers, we become just like them through our silence, through our acquiescence.

We, who CHOOSE to hide our own moral turpitude cannot hide from our guilt.