[Peace-discuss] War crime

[C. G. Estabrook]

But it shouldn't be.

Chomsky remarked years ago, "If you assume that there’s no hope, you
guarantee that there will be no hope.  However, if you assume that such
a thing as an instinct for freedom exists, then hope may be justified,
and it may be possible to build a better world. That’s your choice."

And I think Justice Jackson did realize what he was doing. He said at 
Nuremberg, "If certain acts of 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 
.... We must never forget that the record on which we judge these 
defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To 
pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as 
well."

--CGE

Laurie at advancenet.net wrote:
> Statements are so easy to make and good quotes are so very easy to 
> come up with; but it comes clear in the light of historic actions 
> that they are mainly rationalizations and legitimizing explanations 
> that people use to justify their own behaviors while condemning 
> others' behaviors.  One should have asked Jackson why the U.S. 
> government and its officials were not taken to take under the law for
>  starting many of the Indian wars.  It couldn't have been because the
>  white man won or could it?
> 
> To further play devil's advocate, one could questionably make a case 
> for the fact that the Allies at the conclusion of WWI set the 
> conditions that provoked the start of WWII, although not necessarily 
> the strategies, tactics, and inhumane behaviors.  How again did the 
> indiscriminate inhuman violence perpetrated against certain classes 
> or populations of civilians by the Germans differ from that the 
> Americans against the American Indians, the Japanese-Americans, 
> against Mexican-Americans and the Chinese in America, the residents 
> of Dresden, or the cities on which the atomic bombs were dropped? One
> does not have to restrict this to the U.S.; one can turn to the 
> Spanish Inquisition, the UK in Northern Ireland or India, the French 
> in Algeria, etc.
> 
> It is all about power politics where the winner defines the rules of 
> right and wrong.
> 
>> -----Original Message----- From: 
>> peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss- 
>> bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G. Estabrook Sent: 
>> Wednesday, September 26, 2007 3:16 PM To: Peace Discuss Subject: 
>> [Peace-discuss] War crime
>> 
>> 
>> 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. --U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S.
>>  representative to the international Conference on Military Trials,
>>  August 12, 1945
>> 
>> 
>> 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. --Nuremberg War Tribunal 
>> regarding wars of aggression