<I'm neither uncomfortable or outraged>
Yes.
That is the problem.
I've read accounts of what Americans thought about the rounding up and incarceration of the Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in WWII. Mostly, they didn't think it was a good thing; they didn't think it was a bad thing. There was a bit of paranoia about Japanese-Americans as spies or a "fifth column", but this wasn't taken very seriously by most people. Mostly, people didn't think about it at all. It was just something that happened, not very important to them, didn't affect them. Very, very few non-Japanese questioned the program, and protest was practically non-existent. The government ordered it done, so it was done, end of story.
I've also read about what Germans thought about their concentration camps in WWII. Same story, really (I mean about the public reaction to it). Except for the ardent Nazis, nobody was enthusiastic about it. But everyone did what they were told to do, to put in the infrastructure and organize it and make it happen. The nation was at war, it was ordered, so it was done. End of story.
And, apparently, same story with today's proto-concentration camp at Guantanamo. We're just not going to think about it. They will be forgotten, another group of Disappeared (every modern guerrilla war has such a group). We're especially not going to think about the historical parallels. |
