A book published in Paris last week by Paul Aussaresses, a former French intelligence chief, details the torture and summary execution of Algerian revolutionaries he killed in the mid-1950s. His atrocities were systematic and repeated, while Kerrey is accused with one extemporaneous event. That can be no defense for war crimes. For a long time, those acts had the consent of both developed societies. It was a consent based in part on willful ignorance, in part on official deception.
Countries pursue such retroactive inquests guided by the values of the changed society of today.
America's obsession with celebrity looms larger here than a thirst for justice. Kerrey denies the accusation. In France, Aussaresses' book is rapidly becoming an intellectual cause celebre . It raises the question of when societies can acknowledge knowing what they knew all along. That is the political question that surrounds all wars.