The Nuremberg Charter, for example, defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation or the waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties…,” a definition that fits U.S. actions in Afghanistan during 2001.
It is not only the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq whose rights have been trampled, for today the globe is being transformed into an unchecked superpower playpen where might appears to make right. Hundreds of years of human rights progress are in serious jeopardy as long as governmental war criminals live blissfully in the knowledge that they will never be accountable for their crimes.
The more the public observes reference in the news to possible war crimes violations, the more decision makers will be accountable. Otherwise, the impunity of high Bush administration officials for the immense violations documented….threatens to turn back the clock on human progress by shredding the Magna Carta, the American Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and similar agreements that have advanced humanity from barbarism toward civilized behavior.
Bush has accomplished what Osama Bin Laden never thought possible---a transformed United States where leaders have abandoned democratic principles and loyal citizens are profoundly ashamed of how the ideals of the country they love so much have been abandoned. Something must be done or Americans will believe that whatever Bush has done was right.
Bringing George W. Bush and his administration to justice for war crimes is the most compelling way in which to dispel the fiction that what has been done was necessary and proper. Otherwise, the specter of war crimes will continue to haunt the world, and civilization itself will unravel helplessly. #
(Professor Haas, a distinguished authority on international law and human rights, is the author or editor of 33 books on government and world politics. Haas has taught political science at Northwestern, Purdue, and the University of London. To receive his book “George W. Bush, War Criminal?”(Praeger), from which the information for this article was drawn, please send check in the amount of $32 to Haas at P.O. Box 46127, Los Angeles, CA 90046. Haas may be reached at mikehaas@aol.com.)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
