Shawn wrong.

I have a bone to pick with Wallace Shawn, whose work I much admire (Interview, by Hizabeth DiNovella, December issue). He is much mistaken on the question of what Americans are obliged to do to stop G. W. and his crew from doing horrid things like torture. And I think he overestimates just what decent Germans were morally obliged to do to oppose the policies of Hitler.

In the case of us Americans, the most potent thing almost all of us can do, though Shawn pooh-poohs this, is simply vote against G. W. and his works at every opportunity. Many of us have done that.

And Hitler's Germany? We may admire the bravery of the White Rose and sympathize with the moral evolution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he moved from principled Christian pacifist to attempted assassin of Hitler. But the fact remains that ordinary Germans were in no position to do anything effective to end the crimes of the regime. They were only in a position to get themselves and their families and friends killed while failing at every turn.

Joseph Auclair

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

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