August 7, 2006
War Crimes and Responsibility of the Bush Administration
by Rodrigue Tremblay
"A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Father of the American Constitution
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Can a democracy turn fascist and militaristic? It sure can, and that is the most severe threat a democracy can ever face. The 20th Century example was Germany in the 1930's. —The Nazi Party was elected in November 1932, with only 33.1 percent of the votes, but when its leader Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, it immediately began subverting the German Weimar Constitution by concentrating political power in its own hands, while increasing military expenditures. The Nazi government then suspended a number of constitutional protections of civil liberties under the pretext of external and internal threats to its security. The following steps taken by Nazi Germany were to initiate a series of illegal wars of aggression against other countries. This culminated with World War II in which more than 50 million people died.
After the war, principles of international law were established in order to prevent future mischievous politicians from embarking upon wars of aggression.
In the first instance, the U.S. participated in establishing the Nuremberg standard of international criminal justice, which states that it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression. This was the charge that the chief U.S. prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), brought against German Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials. As Justice Jackson put it: "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."
The Nuremberg Charter is the most damning statute for leaders who engage in wars of aggression and mass murders, because it establishes the principle that leaders who initiate such wars and commit such crimes bear an individual criminal responsibility, not only for launching wars of aggression, but for the war crimes and murders which inevitably flow from their unprovoked aggression. This is well spelled out by the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal: “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.” Moreover, "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore
have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
The rest is at: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1031.htm
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