Eric Fair, now professor at Lehigh University, wrote in his testimony for today’s New York Times: “I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured.” When he realizes a younger generation doesn’t even have a memory of the images of Abu Ghraib and he could try to escape or at least dress up his memories, he doesn’t allow himself the tempting comfort of forgetfulness. Partly because oblivion is not possible for someone who can still smell the odors of the building where he participated in state-ordered torture and can’t help to remember certain events that I don’t even want to imagine? He doesn’t “move on,” or let time “heal,” as the magic invocations go. Forgetting is not forgiveness. Neither is rationalizing. To know that others did it and that it was ordered by state agencies and political leaders doesn’t help either. Some of the latter, perhaps even the New York Times editors who pushed for war in 2002 and 2003, are now in partial remorse mode. Grand bien leur fasse. But how can Eric Fair be forgiven? How can I who draw much comfort and peace from our economically and socially pervasive military machinery?