This fall will be the 60th anniversary of the WW II Nuremburg trials. And it couldn’t be more timely. Because while two of the crimes established by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremburg, `War Crimes’ and ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ have passed into public consciousness and understanding, the most important, considered by the IMT to be the supreme international crime seems largely forgotten.
It is CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: “namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.”
The four prosecuting nations at the trial were the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. The concept of individual responsibility for `Crimes Against Peace’, for the waging of a war of aggression, is not some vague international value. It is a standard of international law that the United States was absolutely fundamental in creating.
At the end of the most devastating war the world had ever known, and with the spectre of nuclear weapons shadowing the future, the fundamental purpose of the IMT was not just to bring to justice those most responsible for WWII and its atrocities, but to establish a code of law that would deter individuals from initiating acts of war. Government leaders were to be held responsible under international law, and `following orders’ was not to be a valid defence for crimes of war. This principle that not just nations, but individuals, could be charged by an international body meant that for the first time individuals could be held responsible for crimes on an international scale.
A law that would deter individuals from initiating acts of war would be pretty handy right now. However:
Sixty years ago, in his historic opening statement of the Nuremburg trial, Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said “The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a great responsibility.”
Fifty years later, the United States has failed in it’s responsibility to ensure justice and nurture peace. It will not help establish the International Criminal Court that could enforce the principals of individual accountability for humanities greatest crimes, that could bring to all nations the Nuremberg Principles that the US first established 50 years ago. The United States government cannot help establish them. Because it is in violation of them. In violation of the worst of them, the supreme international crime. George W. Bush has committed Crimes Against Peace.
If there is to be justice in this century, not just in the last one, then somewhere there is a city and a courthouse with a name that will one day be as well known as Nuremburg. Where when the `War for Freedom’ lies smouldering in its inevitable ruin, when the last of the dead have been buried, when the war-weary living sit down in the courtroom and ask for accountability. And the world once again hears: Principle I. Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment…
Gosh what a difference 60 years make…
Who alive during those years was thinking “uh oh, better not set THIS precedent because one day far, far in the future, we might have Americans prosecuted for crimes against peace”?
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,–
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue–
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
Pax
how about posting the diary that you did on the Romanian kids with the amazing picture of them..It was one of my favorites. Booman is excepting past diaries from other blogs and if anyone hasn’t read it, they should. all my best…chamonix.
There is no room for the rule of law in America’s narcissistic media. We are the center of the universe, the alpha and omega of everything right and good. The law is just a convenient excuse for whatever we feel like doing.
There is a perfect consistency here: Law, science, history, even basic findings of fact at trial (the eruption of lies in the Schiavo circus), all are entirely dispensable if they don’t fit into the preferred story line, which always features us as not just the protagonists, but the heroes.
This, to me, is the most telling single fact of all:
Birds of a feather…
Yikes! What if the new Iraq signs on? 100,000 civilian deaths according to The Lancet.
Crimes against the peace are in violation of American law because we have entered legally binding treaties that make certain kinds of warfare illegal. Nazi leaders who were responsible for World War II were charged and convicted with crimes against the peace, based on laws set out in an international treaty advocated for by America. This treaty, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was adopted by over 60 countries, who all agreed to not use warfare to resolve disputes. The treaty never ceded the power of nations to defend themselves when attacked, but did make it illegal to invade other countries. After World War II, the United States and other countries agreed to limit warfare to national and collective security only.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is in violation of both American and international law. It violates agreements that the American government has made with other countries. This is a serious matter that threatens the general security of the American people. When one country uses force to resolve disputes, other nations respond by building up their armies. This leads to a less stable world – a world less safe for everyone. The world learned this lesson the hard way in the two World Wars of the last century. Tens of millions of people died because power between nations was out of balance and was based on force alone.
Few would argue that the United States should not defend itself. But since Iraq was not a direct threat to the United States, the occupation of Iraq was an act of aggression and not defense. Additionally, the government lied to Americans about the reasons for the war. No American should be forced to fight, kill and die for an illegal war based on lies.
http://draftfreedom.org/illegalwar.html