There’s a tendency in Argentine human rights discourse to blame the Americans and the French for the moral catastrophe of the 1976-83 dictatorship on the grounds of the former’s encouraging of the coup and its evil methods and the latter’s training of the Argentine officer corps in the counter-insurgency doctrines developed in their Indochina and Algerian Wars. The same tendency sees the Argentine armed forces as extraneous to the society that produced and supported them. All of which exonerates el gran pueblo argentino from any responsibility for the horror of those years. This tendency must be resisted. No French or American hand was ever laid on an Argentine prisoner. The catastrophe was inflicted on Argentines by Argentines with the support of other Argentines.
However, while nodding in approval as a lynch mob beats its victim to death isn’t the same as joining in yourself, you accept part of the moral responsibility for its action, even more so if you shout, “Go on, give it to him!”. If you shout “Stop!” it’s a different story even if the mob takes no notice of you.
Thus, a certain measure of responsibility must be personally assigned to Henry Kissinger.
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