Might Makes Right
Apparently, in order to successfully try Iraqi political prisoners for war crimes, the US must abandon the principle of non-aggression that it used to indict the Nazis at Nuremberg. Tricky. Is this “Kellogg-Briand” pact still in operation or was it superceded by the UN Conventions?
War crimes are always perpetrated by the loser in war. Though both sides may commit crimes, the victors have always been able to turn might into right, ignoring their own violations and penalising their enemy. At Nuremberg in 1945, the western states knew that their bombing of German cities could pose awkward questions and they quietly dropped their charges against the Luftwaffe; the democracies sat side-by-side with the Soviet Union, which many people argued at the time could itself be regarded as guilty on several of the same counts for which German leaders were indicted … The Nuremberg precedent might be invoked to argue that committing crimes in order to overcome tyranny is legally permissible, but there is an awkward contrast with the treatment of German war crime in 1945: now it is the US and Britain that many believe have waged a war of aggression … The one instrument the Allies could find in 1945 to explain that Hitler’s wars were illegal was the Kellogg-Briand pact, signed in Paris in 1928 at the behest of the then American secretary of state. The pact had outlawed war as an instrument of policy for all the signatory powers, including Britain and the US.
I suppose we could resurrect some Baathist to replace Saddam. And rebuild the torture chambers. And re arrest the scarred, mutilated, even prop up the corpses and pretend they are not dead. How is the smell up your______. Here on planet earth, it is springtime. And no, not for hitler.
I noted weeks ago that the Bush Gang announced they were going to in-install Baathists into power in Iraq. Where the hell were you? Cheering on the cluster bombers on Fox News?
http://www.meehawl.com/Blogfiles/2003_03_16_WeekArchive.php#91139250
Many of them could be co-opted by the new regime. Many of the current bigwigs there will be given an option to join the US-led occupation regime in an effortless leopard-spot-changing sleight-of-hand:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,919493,00.html
“We want a stable Iraq and as much as possible of their armed forces in one piece. We do not want to destroy every large tank of the Republican Guard.” British military officials say they will rely on the help of existing Iraqi forces to maintain law and order in a post-Saddam Iraq. Military sources paint a picture of “British brigadiers alongside Iraqi brigadiers”, after the “implosion of the regime”, as one put it.
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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.
–Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, U.S. Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, August 12, 1945