{"id":1499,"date":"2003-04-15T00:25:00","date_gmt":"2003-04-15T04:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2003-04-15T00:25:00","modified_gmt":"2003-04-15T04:25:00","slug":"might-makes-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2003\/04\/15\/00\/25\/might-makes-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Might Makes Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 Is this “Kellogg-Briand” pact still in operation or was it superceded by the UN Conventions?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t