http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 09 November 2004
Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote:
"No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have begun to invade the Iraqi city of Fallujah. To "soften up" the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on "insurgent targets." The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.
<snip>
There have already been 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths since Bush launched his first strike on Iraq 18 months ago - that is, above and beyond those killed by Saddam Hussein, sanctions, U.S. bombings, and disease, all put together, in the 15 months prior to the invasion.
<snip>
Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression. "Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition," according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.
<snip>
Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." ..more..
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml ----------------------------------
Statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals
August 12, 1945
on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945
There are some things I would like to say, particularly to the American people, about the agreement we have just signed.
For the first time, four of the most powerful nations have agreed not only upon the principles of liability for war crimes of persecution, but also upon the principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace.
Repeatedly, nations have united in abstract declarations that the launching of aggressive war is illegal. They have condemned it by treaty.
But now we have the concrete application of these abstractions in a way which ought to make clear to the world that those who lead their nations into aggressive war face individual accountability for such acts. <snip>
"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which
their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the
war, but that they started it. And we must not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that
no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."<snip>
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals
August 12, 1945
READ THE ENTIRE STATEMENT HERE:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm
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