Opinion of Clara Tea:
The meek and gentle don't lead now, but they are said to inherit the earth (or what's left of it after pollution, war, bigotry, etc).
Hitler was human. We could say that Hitler could have been changed to a better person.
We could tell ourselves that we shouldn't hate a man who stole from 6 million Jews, starved them in torture camps (like Guantanamo in modern times), and ultimately gassed or shot them to death. Hitler attacked peaceful nations, and most feel that he had to be stopped.
It is hard to separate actions from the man. It is hard to believe that such a man could be redeemed, or that we should idly sit by as he wreaks havoc on the world hoping for the slim chance that we could somehow redeem him.
Are we just after "prevention" or do we also seek "justice?"
There were many reasons to punish Nazis:
1. Prevent another Hitler from making a torture camp in Guantanamo (apparently there wasn't sufficient incentive to stop W. Bush)
2. Prevent another Hitler from attacking peaceful nations that were not linked to terrorism (Iraq and Afghanistan).(apparently there wasn't sufficient incentive to stop war criminal W. Bush, who is now a wanted man in places like Canada, who will extradite him to the Hague for war crime trials if he ventures into their country).
3. Punish wrongdoing as a deterrent to others, so they don't do wrong in the future.
4. Do the crime, do the time
5. Try to evade war crime charges: (Nazis said they did "not see (Nazi)"). They faked their deaths and moved to South America, where their stolen loot was welcomed, where they could be kings and pay stolen mammon to make servants of the locals. Only now we see that infamous Nazis lived long and wonderful lives (people like Dr. Mengele...the maniac doctor who performed weird experiments on minorities in Nazi Germany. One such experiment was to peel the skin off of a Black man without anesthetics, to see if white skin of a corpse could be grafted on....thus making the Black man part of the "superior" race. W. Bush "tried to" evade war crime charges by getting Chapman College, Law School, professor, John Woo to redefine the word "torture" so that no torture was ever done (not by W. Bush and not by Hitler), and the new definition of torture was so stringient that no torture could ever be performed in the future by anyone. Redefining obviously is yet another way of telling a lie. Lets redefine the color white to be black, up defined to be down, left defined to be right. You can see that we can turn logic topsy turvey, so that logic no longer applies to reality by merely redefining. W. Bush also redefined "homelessness" so the statistics looked better. W. Bush also redefined "hunger." During the W. Bush administration, the health of the failing economy was measured by a new means (Gross Domestic Product), rather than the standard way of defining it by (Gross National Product). The difference is that you can't eat war or soldiers. Yet, the military was part of the Gross Domestic Product, but not part of the Gross National Product. In other words the health of the economy, under the warmonger W. Bush was measured by the amount of money that was spent on the military. Redefining terms is another way of lying.
6. Respect wishes of the victims. Victims, looking at the graves of their loved ones (if they do, indeed, know where their loved ones are buried), they seek vengeance, and want to at least see the perpetrators punished for their crimes. To allow wanton murder and destruction to go unpunished, and let people go free after they did such great harm is unconscionable.
7. Prevent loopholes in future legal actions. If we let off George Bush (the father) and Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra scandal, and stalled the investigation at Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, without looking at the orders of generals, and ultimately at the Vice President and President, who had plausible deniability (by design), then future war crimes would go unpunished, as well.
8. If we ignore world opinion, and leave it to the nation to punish war criminals, then Hitler would have gone free (after all, there were crowds of cheering Germans right up to the bitter end when Hitler faked his own death and went to South America). The same is true of W. Bush, who rejected a world court (like the kind that could take care of Vladamir Putin today). A world court would have convicted W. Bush of making unfounded wars and making torture camps (like the one in Iraq, or on the ship in the Indian Ocean).
9. If we had been peaceful to Hitler, we'd now be in Nazi America....a wholly owned subsidiary of Nazi Germany. We'd be enslaved, as our kids and grandkids would be, beaten, malnourished, etc. In the mean time, the guilty would be living the life of Reilly. They'd be sipping margaritas by pools, while we'd be toiling to clean those pools, and beaten if we didn't clean them fast enough.
At some point, we must obey God and not kill or fight a war.
At a different point, we must oppose ruthless dictators to keep the world safe for the democracy that we fought so hard to win. We have a legacy to pass down to our kids.
