Sunday, December 07, 2008

Some thoughts on Pearl Harbor Day...

On this, the 67th anniversary of the day the Japanese launched a surprise military strike on a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii , I'm reminded of the words of Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl: "no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them."

Dr. Frankl, who survived four concentration camps including Auschwitz, and witnessed firsthand the horror that man can foist upon man, cogently reminds us that there can be no excuse for the devastation that was Hiroshima nor for the internment of thousands of Japanese in U.S. detention camps, and the brutality to which they were subjected.

Similarly, the high crimes and misdemeanors that were committed by an administration that alleged to be avenging the deaths of 3,000 who perished in the bombing of the World Trade Center is no justification for more killing, and state-sanctioned torture.

Whenever an inmate is sentenced to die for any crime he commits, the state that orders his murder has blood on its hands for, as Victor Frankl rightly says, "no one has the right to do wrong.".