ABSTRACT
The American public has in the past few years accepted two programs of violence that lack legal, political, and ethical justification. The responsibility for America’s unjustifiable transgression of Iraq’s borders and the transformation of the United States into a torture society lies not only with the Bush White House, but also the American people who supported those policies of violence for which the administration proposed flimsy and often transparently false rationalizations. The question addressed by this essay is: How can we understand the acquiescence of the citizenry in these blatant violations of international law and universal ethical values?
