Whoa! Could be a different ball game regarding U.S. preferential treatment and immunity for its presidents.
U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974, which declares: 'Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State', and listed seven specific examples," including:
"The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; and
Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State."
The UN resolution also stated that: "No consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression."
During these decades of U.S. control of the UN, U.S. Commanders in Chief have been able to ignore its non-binding resolutions, but in the coming international political rearrangement the big powers might effect a restraining surveillance and empowerment to bring all war crimes committing heads of state to justice - conceivably without a statute of time limitation.
From time to time conscience stricken prominent Americans have made waves for U.S. presidents committing war crimes. A Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Gen. Telford Taylor was so
bold as the say he would have been proud to have prosecuted the U.S.
airmen shot down and captured while bombing the cities of Hanoi and
Haiphong. We can derive from this impassioned statement what Tayor's
judgment was of the presidents that sent down the orders for pilots
like John McCain to partake in crimes against humanity.
Indeed already during the time of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi and Japanese generals, U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes. LeMay commanded the massive incendiary attacks on 64 Japanese cities. Clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm killed more than 500,000 Japanese civilians and left 5 million homeless. Some 40% of the built-up areas of 66 cities were destroyed, according to U.S. Army estimates. Aircrews at the tail end of the bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target. [Wikipedia] Various American generals have expressed the opinion that they could have been tired for war crimes under the same Nuremberg definitions.
"The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street." Telford Taylor
Another Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, "If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. 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."
Thereafter, how many wars have American presidents either lost or failed to win? The mass atrocities against the Vietnamese and their neighbors in Laos and Cambodia seem compounded by their utter futility - at least in hindsight.
So the Government of United States of America, a co- founder of the Nuremberg Principles, subsequently adopted as international law has General Assembly, ironically has allowed its presidents, like Obama today , to have been in horrendous violations of the very laws it helped create define crimes against humanity and their punishments. Can this contradiction go on being overlooked or forgiven?
Obama has indicated his response to the Nuremberg War Tribunal law regarding wars of aggression,
"This war [in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen] was thrust upon us. We were brutally attacked on 9/11" (referring to Arabs from none of the above countries).
And we can suppose that Obama, a good politician and debater, would find words to weave around the rest of the Nuremberg Principles as described below. It would be a jury, judge or panel of judges that would decide whether to convict or find him innocent.
Principle Six (below) might prove challenging even for the cleverness of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was able to praise Martin Luther King, but he would bury his teaching in an acceptance speech defending war as necessary and unavoidable.
The Nuremberg Principles - part of the UN body jurisprudence.
Principle I states, "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment."
Principle II "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."
U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974, which declares: 'Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State', and listed seven specific examples," including:
"The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; and
Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State."
The UN resolution also stated that: "No consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression."
During these decades of U.S. control of the UN, U.S. Commanders in Chief have been able to ignore its non-binding resolutions, but in the coming international political rearrangement the big powers might effect a restraining surveillance and empowerment to bring all war crimes committing heads of state to justice - conceivably without a statute of time limitation.
Indeed already during the time of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi and Japanese generals, U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes. LeMay commanded the massive incendiary attacks on 64 Japanese cities. Clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm killed more than 500,000 Japanese civilians and left 5 million homeless. Some 40% of the built-up areas of 66 cities were destroyed, according to U.S. Army estimates. Aircrews at the tail end of the bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target. [Wikipedia] Various American generals have expressed the opinion that they could have been tired for war crimes under the same Nuremberg definitions.
"The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street." Telford Taylor
Another Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, "If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. 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."
Thereafter, how many wars have American presidents either lost or failed to win? The mass atrocities against the Vietnamese and their neighbors in Laos and Cambodia seem compounded by their utter futility - at least in hindsight.
So the Government of United States of America, a co- founder of the Nuremberg Principles, subsequently adopted as international law has General Assembly, ironically has allowed its presidents, like Obama today , to have been in horrendous violations of the very laws it helped create define crimes against humanity and their punishments. Can this contradiction go on being overlooked or forgiven?
Obama has indicated his response to the Nuremberg War Tribunal law regarding wars of aggression,
"This war [in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen] was thrust upon us. We were brutally attacked on 9/11" (referring to Arabs from none of the above countries).
And we can suppose that Obama, a good politician and debater, would find words to weave around the rest of the Nuremberg Principles as described below. It would be a jury, judge or panel of judges that would decide whether to convict or find him innocent.
Principle Six (below) might prove challenging even for the cleverness of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was able to praise Martin Luther King, but he would bury his teaching in an acceptance speech defending war as necessary and unavoidable.
The Nuremberg Principles - part of the UN body jurisprudence.
Principle I states, "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment."
Principle II "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."
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