I tremble for my country when I think that God is just.

                                  --Thomas Jefferson

I remember a conversation that was my political awakening. I was about 10. The family was at dinner. The conversation was about the holocaust, the ovens and the six million Jews. I became hysterical. They gave me aspirin and rum to calm me down, I think I missed the next day of school. (Much later, my father had no memory of this event, but I'm sure it happened.)

'This would have been about 12 years after WW II. My father had been in Europe with the army. He almost never talked about it, but I know the liberated concentration camp victims made a profound impression on him. He didn't talk about his army experience at all, except for a family in Belgium that befriended him and served rabbit in his honor, a rabbit that he saw alive and could not eat. Except for that, he never talked about the war. But he didn't allow toy guns in the house, and he would yell at me and my brother if we played with stick guns. Later, he supported my draft refusal.

One time we had a conversation. I maintained that anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time, provoked and goaded by cohorts and circumstances, was capable of any atrocity. He said no; he would never have been a Nazi, not in any circumstances; he could never sink to that level.

Look at these photos.

I came of age in a time when the US was experiencing a nonviolent revolution against racism, and the example and inspiration of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement confirmed my commitment to nonviolence, but when I think about it now, my father's attitude must have been formative.

A pacifist in the US in the second half of the 20th century is, to say the least, out of step. It wasn't just Vietnam, which was bad enough, and stimulated a brief widespread antiwar movement. It was all the little Vietnams all over the world where we have put our money, energy, arms and advisors, always favoring the most reactionary, oppressive forces because we were "fighting communism." The Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Chile, El Salvador.

Look at these photos.

Sometime I didn't even pay attention. I washed my hands of it. Stopped reading the newspaper. In 1954 I was seven, too young to be outraged about what we did to Guatemala. In 1973 I was absorbed in local politics and my own life; I don't remember knowing about what we had done to Chile. I don't remember. I must have known. Could I not have known? And in the 80's, when we were sending a million dollars a day in military aid to the dictatorship in El Salvador, I must have known. We all must have known.

Look at these photos.

It was far away. It was one more name in a painful litany: Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador. One more name. One more place where our imperial might was coming down on the wrong side, against the rights of man, against the progress and protection of women and children, always for the bad guy, the corrupt oligarch who promised to fight communism. One more name. One more name. But we must have known.

Look at these photos.

Just like those Germans must have known what was going on down the road. They must have smelled it. They didn't want to know. What could they have done if they had known? Isn't it sometimes better not to know?

Look at these photos.

In the 80's I lived on the land and I got out to the wilderness whenever I could. I worked on a couple of environmental campaigns. At the time I thought that the only important political issues were environmental, because they were irreversible. Later I saw that environmental issues and human rights are inexorably intertwined, but at the time I thought that if we could arrest environmental decline, people could smarten up about other things at their leisure. I don't remember thinking about El Salvador. It was another far away disaster that I couldn't do anything about.

Look at these photos.

I'm ashamed now that I didn't pay more attention. I want to make excuses. I was busy with other things. The media failed to keep me informed. But I should have been paying more attention. We all should have. These photos are a testament to a terrible human rights disaster in which our mighty government played a shameful role. We should have been paying more attention. We should pay attention now.

Look at these photos.