Somerset Maugham, “The Summing Up”

“At first sight it is curious that our own offences should seem to us so much less heinous than the offences of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and the bad in ourselves together. But when we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he had never told not one, but a hundred? We are shocked when we discover that great men were weak and petty, dishonest or selfish, sexually vicious, vain or intemperate; and many people think it disgraceful to disclose to the public its heroes failings. There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same. For my part I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind the world would consider me a monster of depravity.”

Now American traits. Consider “terrorism”. The US plays fast and loose with civilian lives. In WWII the firebombing of Tokyo and German cities was pure terrorism on a grand scale, conducted after the war was “won”, but before Armistice. (Had the US not won the war, the Allied leaders would have justifiably been hung for those.) In Vietnam, General Lew Walt, the theatre commander of Marines, said “if they are dead and they are Vietnamese they are VC”, which was pure nonsense, but boosted his body counts. The US deliberately bombed civilians in the former Yugoslavia, shot up civilians in Afghanistan (a 4 hour attack on 5 different villages) and will do so again in Iraq.

And who do you think gave Saddam anthrax? What does a “rogue nation” look like?

“The center of all iniquity is always 5 miles behind enemy lines.” Carl Jung.

Not! The center of all iniquity is in the hearts of True Believers who justify all manner of cruelty as either retribution or good for the object of their attentions.

Arf