Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

[Mrs Behavin]

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with amazed surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."

But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

 

[IntruderLS1]

I really respect your ability to see through the BS in the world Mrs. B. I've been surprised several times by your ability to pick up on subtle truths, and call them out for what they are.

In this case however, I must take a step back from what you seem to be saying. Did you write the above piece, or have you posted it here from an online journal someplace?

To compare the United States, and the President to the Nazi's and Adolf Hitler seems to me to be a vast stretch by any means of the imagination.

The United States had the leagal and moral authority to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussain. All of the pre-war intelligence has been proven to be true, and there were a host of broken UN resolutions that gave us legal means. Iraq is a better place today. They have a self elected government, and a constitution that the people set in place for themselves. They are represented by their government, and don't have to live in fear of the bully with the chemical weapons if they disagree.

Saddam and his boys were bad guys in any book. They killed whoever got in their way, they raped, burned, pillaged, and plundered. The world is better off without them, and the United States is safer without Saddam giving his WMD to the bad guys of the world.

President Bush did the right thing, even though it (later turned out to be) the unpopular thing.

God Bless America, and God Bless GWB.


PS: Americans are a special people.

 

[Mrs Behavin]

It was a conversation that got started at work amongst several of us last night and it got pretty deep. I just wanted to see what yalls views were about it. I can see both ways on this subject.

 

[IntruderLS1]

Fair enough. I think it is an excellant conversations for the people of this country to be having. Cheers Mrs. B.

The thing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.... That was a time before the radiation and fallout were understood. Back in '45, a nuculear bomb was just a big ass boom boom, and it was as simple as that. But more importantly, that bomb saved hundreds of thousands of lives. An invasion of Honshu (sp?) would have cost an estimated 1,000,000 Allied lives, and very likely six times that number of Jabanese lives. To borrow a quote from one of my favorite movies (Crimson Tide) "I say 'Yes sir. Drop that F'er. .... Twice'."


PS: Remember Pearl Harbor...... :*(