"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought."
John Rawls
Last week Gen. Reynaldo Bignone, the last of Argentina's military dictators, and five of his military officers were finally convicted and sentenced for their part in the torture, illegal detention and murder of people who opposed the military junta that ruled that country from 1976 until 1983. During Argentina's "Dirty War," at least 13,000 and more likely closer to 30,000 people were "disappeared" by the military junta. That is, they disappeared, vanished, were murdered after being tortured, some of them by being tossed out of airplanes while still alive over the Atlantic Ocean. Pregnant women were disappeared after giving birth and their babies were given to childless military families. Bignone, 82, as unrepentant as he was merciless, was commander of the infamous Campo de Mayo, the largest clandestine torture center of the junta, from 1976 to 1978. He was found guilty of 56 cases of murder, kidnapping and torture. According to human rights groups, only 50 of the 4,000 people who entered Campo de Mayo outside Buenos Aires survived. A photo of Bignone at his trial shows the scowling, arrogant, defiant face of an old, angry man who believes virtue and truth are properly the servants of power, in this case the horrors of his own.
But any social institution (or public servant, even military ones) that doesn't have it the other way around—power in the service of virtue and truth—will eventually fail. Institutions and the men who serve or/and corrupt them come and go, but justice just keeps on coming ... and coming. Whether one holds the traditional view that justice is divine, part of the cosmic order, or that it is a more modern, purely social concept of universal fairness, the basis of human laws, something about injustice, unresolved justice, delayed justice and justice escaped just doesn't sit right in the human mind and heart. The concept of justice, like virtue and truth, is instinctive and, like water running to the sea, will eventually find its way.
Before the military junta was driven from power and a democratic government reinstalled in Argentina in 1983, the generals managed to grant themselves amnesty from all human rights violations and ordered all records related to military repression destroyed. In other words, the generals got away with murder, up to 30,000 of them. They were understandably frightened of the due process of law that they had so bravely refused their victims, and the members of the junta cowered behind the amnesty as long as they could. Just forget about it, they said. But there is no amnesty from justice, and when they couldn't cower any longer, the good old boys of the junta tried justification. At his sentencing Bignone said, "In times of peace the disappearance of a single person means one thing and in times of war it means something else." But there was no war, only persecution by the military junta of Argentine citizens. And though the general is too arrogant to appreciate the horrible irony of his own words, the disappearance of 30,000 people without due process is, indeed, something else.
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One report from the trial reads, "Relatives of victims of the military regime held up photos of their loved ones and cheered as the judge handed down the ruling. 'Like with the Nazis, wherever they run, wherever they go, we will find them,' some chanted.
'Today is a good day for Argentines,' said Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group. (The Grandmothers is an activist group dedicated to finding the babies of those disappeared mothers who were the daughters of the Grandmothers and introducing them as adults to their biological families.)
'Justice was slow in coming but it has finally arrived,' she added, but much remained to be done with hundreds more accused."
The Argentine junta was supported and its many transgressions of human rights explicitly condoned by the United States, particularly by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told the junta, "Look our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. ... We read about human rights problems but not the context. ... The quicker you succeed the better. ... The human rights problem is a growing one. ... If you can finish before Congress gets back the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help."
Kissinger has thus far avoided several warrants for his arrest issued by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon for, among other things, his alleged knowledge and encouragement of the Argentine junta's crimes against humanity. Kissinger, the acknowledged master of realpolitik, the political art of using virtue and truth and whatever else is necessary in the service of power, does not travel to countries like Spain, Argentina and Chile, which would like to talk with him about crimes against humanity. Henry, like some other well-known more current realpolitik public servants who are associated with words like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, enhanced interrogation techniques, extraordinary rendition, Bagram, the Salt Pit, and "black sites" whose names we do not know but which have all been used for torture, murder and detention without due process, has the scowling, arrogant, defiant face of an old, angry man who believes virtue and truth are properly the servants of power, in this case the horrors of his own.
But the scowls, arrogance, defiance and anger only mask the fear and knowledge that justice just keeps on coming ... and coming, and, like water running to the sea, will eventually find its way.
