War of aggression in Iraq is ’supreme international crime’

http://newsminer.com/2007/06/16/7503

By Rob Mulford
Published June 16, 2007


“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, 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.” These words were spoken by Robert H. Jackson, Supreme Court Justice and chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals. They possibly elicit the most important lesson gained from the horror that was World War II.

The tribunals produced international rules governing the use of military force. In Customary International Law, these rules are codified in the Principles of Nuremberg as adopted by the U.N. International Law Commission in 1950. In Treaty Law they are codified in the United Nations Charter. Treaty Law is, per Article 6 Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America “the supreme Law of the Land.”

As in Germany following the Reichstag fire of 1933, officials holding the highest offices of our government and powerful moneyed corporations exploited the pain that our nation suffered from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Repeating phrases of questionable veracity like: “they hate us because we are free”; “Islamo-Fascists”; “if we don’t fight them there we’ll have to fight them here on our own streets”; and “we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” they sowed seeds of fear and hate. The fruition of these seeds was a war of aggression against Iraq, a sovereign nation that posed no credible threat to the U.S.

Using the Vienna Convention’s ordinary meaning rule in reading the applicable treaties , International Customary Law, public statements made by Bush administration officials, evidence that threats of Iraq weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections were contrived, as well as released secret documents (e.g. the Downing Street Memos), a case can be made that the war on Iraq is a war of aggression and therefore “the supreme international crime.”

As the Honorable Justice Jackson states above, aggressive war “is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

This “evil of the whole” includes violations of the Geneva Conventions (treaty law). They are crimes against humanity, war crimes and violations of International Humanitarian Law. Many are committed by our troops — most of whom are decent human beings — placed in frighteningly stressful and impossible situations. Some are committed by private contractors. Many are committed by Iraqi Death Squads trained and supplied by the U.S. under the indifferent eye, the open consent, and/or the direction of the military and the civilian leadership of the U.S. government. Crimes include attacks on medical facilities and ambulances, shelling and bombing of residential neighborhoods with innocent civilians present, the use of illegal and internationally banned weapons (e.g. depleted uranium, MK-77 napalm, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, and thermobaric novel explosives), extrajudicial executions, torture, the raiding of private homes, destruction of private property, the arrest and detention of innocent civilians, the intentional cutting off of civilian water supplies, the arrest and detention of wives to lure suspects into custody, and more. These crimes are documented (e.g. Association of Human Rights Lawyers report published by Consumers for Peace entitled “War Crimes Committed by the United States In Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability”; and the “First and Second Periodical Report of Monitoring Net of Human Rights In Iraq”).

Rob Mulford lives in Fairbanks. He has been charged by state and federal authorities with crimes associated to his anti-war activities.

My subject line is not a criticism of you for posting this, Don-- rather, it's an expression of disappointment that this is still an "issue" rather than a criminal complaint or an indictment. The war against Iraq has been a criminal enterprise from the very beginning-- and that makes a lot of people complicit in conspiracy, aiding and abetting, commission, and etc. Aggressive war IS the supreme international crime, and the great irony is that the U.S. judiciary established that principle at Nuremberg. Now we are the aggressors. We are the war criminals. We are the good Germans who support our troops and our institutions of government while they assault civilization and decency.

The Germans were defeated, their country occupied by the victors who then set up the court. Nothing like this is even close to happening with Bush. As much as I'd like to see it it may be a wasted effort trying to make it happen.