In academia, entertainment and the general opinion of most of
mankind, few ideas are as unimpeachable as this: What the Nazis did
was one hell of a bad thing.

Not just bad. Utterly monstrous. Atrocious. Appalling.
Unfathomable. Indeed, from junior-high school on, American students
are asked to grapple with one of the most perfectly evil episodes
this fallen species has ever produced.

Teachers present the history of World War II and life in the
Holocaust for varying reasons, but one of them is quite mundane: so
it won’t happen again.

That is, so the impressionable minds first coming to fathom
human nature will agree that, whatever it is, it is not to be
smashed into mass graves and hoarded into gas chambers.

When students first encounter the history of the Holocaust,
most–including myself–think, “This can never happen again. No
way. And if it does, well, surely the world would do something.
Surely the world would rise up to defend the oppressed peoples.
“

I never really questioned this certainty, not until the last few
months. Many prominent Americans and others around the world are
tongue-lashing the president and his administration for
“misleading” the world about the need to invade Iraq. People are
outraged and they are careful to note that the president has
seemed, in retrospect, to cast the war more as one of liberation,
one of human rights, than of ending a real threat to national
security.

Perhaps the president did lie. But that is not what should cause
the most anguish for the apostles of John Kerryism. What should
cause despair for the “war is not the answer” industry is not the
question, “Why is the president changing the reason we went to war
to one of liberation?” but “Why wasn’t that our reason in the first
place?”

Once the world learned of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities–of the
mass graves, torture, beatings, rape and public executions–why was
not all that, in itself, enough to spur U.S. politicians and United
Nations bureaucrats into action?

That is a question I am trying answer, and in rebuking others I
am rebuking myself. As the wisdom of Bush’s decision was debated, I
never noticed the contradiction: the repulsive contradiction
between theory and practice. For what good does it do to see
Schindler’s List, what good does it do to weep at the end of a
speech of a Holocaust survivor, what good does it do to teach the
history of Hitler’s rise to power if, when history repeats itself,
we wait year after year after year and U.N. resolution after U.N.
resolution to even consider–let alone do anything–about the
problem?

To this question comes a typical response: There are many evil
leaders around the world, and we cannot go after every one. So, we
must discriminate based either on national security or something
else.

This reasoning is understandable. To cross the world to hunt for
modern-day Stalins might do more harm than good. But sometimes, in
particular instances, the evil is so transparent that deliberation
is not needed. It might not be prudent for one citizen to search
for every rapist in a city–but when he or she is strolling through
the park and stumbles upon a rape in progress, the call of
conscience does not require deeper introspection. When one human
being so manifestly violates another, justice should be done for
its own sake. Justice should be done independent of personal or
political calculations. And this is exactly what should have been
done in Iraq.

The astute reader will, at this point, wonder about the title of
this commentary and what North Korea has to do with Iraq. What
lessons does North Korea demonstrate?

The lesson from North Korea is that we have not learned
anything. On Feb. 1, the London newspaper The Guardian reported
what many people had already suspected: North Korea is hell.

That is, it is hell if you were ever invited to Camp 22, where,
according to The Guardian, “Witnesses have described watching
entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed.” Where they
“are left to an agonizing death while scientists take notes.” Where
“horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.”

Yes, this does sound familiar: it is what we have read about in
school and seen in film, what caused most of us to vow, never
again.

But “again” has arrived. It is here, it is in front of us, and
the oppressed North Koreans represent exactly what social justice
and human rights are supposed to prevent.

The world learned a lesson from Auschwitz. How sickening it
would be if, when Kim Jong Il’s reign comes to a close, the world
has to learn this horrible lesson all over again.

Matt Emerson is a senior studying philosophy.