[Peace-discuss] War crime

[John W.]

At 04:51 PM 9/26/2007, you 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.


Just so.

I've watched Iran's Ahmadinejad interviewed quite a number of times on TV, 
most recently by Charlie Rose.  His interviewer, always parroting the 
official U.S. position, says, "Mr. Ahmadinejad, you are a terrorist.  You 
want to wipe out Israel.  You aid and abet Al Qaida!"

Ahmadinejad replies, "No, YOU are a terrorist!  You Americans are 
terrorists.  You want to wipe out Palestine.  You CREATED Al Qaeda!"

The interviewer says, "Huh uh, YOU are!"  Ahmadinejad says, "YOU are but 
what am I?!"

And on and on it goes, with the American interviewer sooner or later 
blowing his cool and Ahmadinejad just sitting there with that mischievous, 
patient, patronizing little smile on his face.  I'm reminded of us children 
on the playground...except that these are adults, and the fate of the world 
hangs in the balance.

John Wason



> > -----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
> >
> >
> > ###