which to bury, us or the hatchet

So that ICC prosecutor shows up and all of a sudden all of the wounds of two years ago come rushing back to the forefront. Yesterday on News they showed a man who during the now infamous PEV hid in a bush as bandits burned his house down - his family inside it. He listened helplessly first as they desperately screamed, then as their screams slowly started to fade, turned into chokes, until there was deathly silence. You never forget that kind of thing. You never get over the day you hear your loved ones burn to death. You never forgive yourself for being unable to do anything about it. You never get over the fact that they (or you) had done nothing to deserve it, except try to eke out a peaceful living, and that whoever perpetrated the crime rises and sleeps in the knowledge that such a thing will probably never happen to them. One day you'll just be walking, going about your business, and then you'll hear that song play that your baby used to like singing or you'll smell your wife's scent on a random person in the street, or maybe just the smell of smoke, and  it's gonna hit you like a tidal wave. Forgiveness sounds like a very noble concept in theory, but you never forgive these people, because the pain never really goes away.

The depth of the human soul is an interesting thing. Impressions that take seconds to form can take a lifetime to wipe out. Remember that time you were a kid and your neighbour came with lollipops and gave everyone else and skipped you? because earlier in the day you'd refused to share your juice with them? That's how early the vengeful spirit is implanted in us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. From then as we get older the stakes only get  higher, so the feeling only grows deeper. We define justice as nothing short of revenge. And people like St. Augustine [who was actually a Christian theologian btw] don't help any - he's the guy who says an unjust law is no law at all. We read and we find out that revenge is actually a legal principle (the law of retaliation under retributive justice - reciprocity should be equal to the crime: "life for life, wound for wound, stripe for stripe").  It's seemingly in the constitution, so how can it possibly be wrong? 

But even then, the supremacy of the individual being posited by such scholars as Henry David Thoreau - "Any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one." - a concept whose most horrific representation became Adolf Hitler, tends to vindicate us when we harbor such [for want of a more extreme term] ill feelings towards others. It's not as if we need anyone else to validate our dark desires, after all, they haven't been through what we have, have they? No one can understand our loss, so what qualifies them to pass judgement? But as if to add fuel to a fire that's already burning, here comes the law telling you you're actually right in demanding for that head on a plate. How can you not?

Louis Moreno-Ocampo is just one man. The quest for justice runs deeper than can be imagined by any of us. It's probably gonna take more than just him, and more than just one investigation cycle, to set matters right. But, that said, seeing to it that those guilty are made to face up to their crimes seems as good a first step as any. I haven't lost anything/one worth dying over, so I can't speak intelligently on the subject, but the guy on TV was saying if he can't get his family back, then at least he'd like to be able to see the people who took them away be brought to book. He will not be content with the matter just resting like that. All he wants is to know that yes he's suffering, but so are the people who ruined his life. And that's why this ICC prosecutor's coming is so monumental. Ocampo is just one man, but he represents a larger, more deep-seated principle. Revenge. Retribution. Justice. Where does one end and the other begin?

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