Richard Kim  The Nation 4/17/09

Even if every single national and international law approved of the interrogation techniques used by the CIA, would they be just? Hannah Arendt wrestles famously with a similar question in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann claimed, as a CIA agent on trial might, that he was merely doing his duty, that he “not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law.” Arendt, of course, found Eichmann both banal in his evil and culpable. Perhaps more to the point, she argued that the culpability of countless others (what others did or might have done) did not in any way mitigate Eichmann’s guilt. (more…)