Accountability

Lots of things to mull over regarding accountability in today's Sunday papers, both in Greece and here in the US.


Regarding Greece, accountability has never been a virtue at least in modern times.  Ancient Athens did hold folks accountable. Every year they would vote on among other things who they wanted to expel from the city.  Names were written on a broken piece of pottery - that's what 'ostracism' means, broken pottery - and who ever got the most votes had to leave Athens.


But in modern Greece accountability is very weak.  After the doomed invasion of central Asia Minor after World War I - Greece was given northwestern Asia Minor including Smyrna in recognition of ethnic Greek majorities there and for being on the winning side of that war, but overdid it by invading central Turkey and getting their butts kicked and expelled, with many civilians massacred - members of the military were held accountable but not the royalist rulers who ordered the invasion.


After the Nazi's withdrew from Greece at the end of World War II, the collaborators who governed the nation were never prosecuted or even fired.  The Greek resistance was led by the left, including many Communists.  The collaborators who worked with the Nazi's told the Brits and Americans who entered the newly liberated Greece that they should be kept in place to fight the Communists.  The US and UK said okay, and a civil war took place when the left (resistance) and right (collaborators) could not work out a political agreement.


I think Greece is the only country in Nazi-occupied Europe that did not prosecute or at least disqualify from running for office Greek quislings.


That legacy is alive in well in Greece, and you see it in everything from the comical way Greeks park on the side walk, knowing that they can't get towed (the streets are too narrow) and there are no consequences for not paying a ticket. 


And there are serious problems for the state when thousands if not millions of Greeks fail to pay income taxes. The low payment of income taxes - some estimate that 40 percent of Greeks do not file income tax returns - severely hurts a country famously trying to solve a serious economic crisis and pay their bills, obligations and fund their generous pensions.


That lack of accountability and the belief that not everyone is playing by the rules is one reason Greeks are so cynical about their own nation, and why Greece is in serious financial trouble.


Here in the US we face some similar issues with Wall Street. Frank Rich talked about the need for more accountability for Wall Street and the Fed today in the NY Times.  In his column Rich does not relate the problems with both to Hellenism, but he does point out that guys like Alan Greenspan sound very Greek: none of this is my fault!


One reason accountability is important is to get history right.  If no one is held accountable for their actions the bad guys will try to spin their way out of the blame, witness what Greenspan and Robert Rubin told investigators last week.


And look at Virginia declaring April 'Confederate History Month' without talking about slavery.  The apologists for the Civil War keep talking about states rights instead of slavery - or the more elemental fact that the south did not want to be part of the US, the nation of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. They chose to defend and fight for slavery and reject the two greatest documents and ideals ever put to paper, the ideals that define the United States.


But even if slavery never existed, does it make sense to celebrate taking up arms against the American flag and Constitution?  No matter what you were defending, doing that makes you one thing, a traitor.  Why does Virginia (and other states like South Carolina) want to celebrate that?


During Reconstruction the U.S. did hold ex-Confederates accountable; Jefferson Davis for instance was arrested and served two years in prison.  He and other former Confederates where prohibited from running for office or joining the US military.  After 12 years Reconstruction ended (in part to settle the deadlocked presidential election of 1876).  Once Reconstruction ended - and US troops left - the south quickly moved to enact Jim Crow laws and disenfranchise ex-slaves.  Public sentiment in the north was indifferent, so they got away with it.  The U.S. government just gave up on Reconstruction, so I guess in addition to accountability you need persistence.