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April 10, 2009
Should the World Bring Bush and Cheney to Trial?
By Bill Hare
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could be subject to trial by the World Court at The Hague for engaging in preventive war against Iraq.
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Vincent Bugliosi has expressed recent exasperation over the issue of torture being mentioned currently with greater frequency over what the former L.A. County prosecutor believes to be the key issue over which George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should face trial -- murder.
Bugliosi's concern, through which he urges action from an American prosecutorial body to bring Bush and Cheney to trial, could be directly addressed through the international tribunal of the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
A reputable source of keeping up to date about the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the initial "shock and awe"- attacks on Baghdad ordered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prior to occupying that city and the nation of Iraq is Just Foreign Policy. This informative site provides international detailed analysis of significant events throughout the world.
Just Foreign Policy publishes numbers based on the highly respected international medical journal The Lancet. According to The Lancet's detailed continuing study, supportive evidence of which is supplied by Just Foreign Policy, the current death figure is much higher than that reported by America's mainstream media on those rare occasions when any such information is presented.
A current check of Just Foreign Policy reveals the Iraqi civilian death toll following the U.S. invasion to be 1,320,110. The continuing study of The Lancet reveals that 600,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed by July 2006 with the remainder of more than double occurring in the less than three years since then.
A major area of misunderstanding arising even among progressives opposing the war has been the labeling within the mainstream media and elsewhere of the conflict as "pre-emptive war."- Under the rules that governed the Nuremberg Trials, the UN Charter, and other recognized international bodies, pre-emptive war is international legal terminology for legitimate self-defense and is permissible.
The rule governing pre-emptive war is akin to the famous First Amendment principle enunciated in the Supreme Court by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of "clear and present danger."- Under the pre-emptive war concept a nation faces reasonable imminent threat from a foreign invader and under those circumstances possesses a right to attack based on a principle of self-defense.
Bush-Cheney propagandists have been successful in being able to make the term pre-emptive war stick when in reality the issue is that of preventive war, which is clearly illegal under international law.
The brilliant two hour opening presentation by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the main Nuremberg Trial involving the leading figures of Nazi Germany was centered on connecting German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler with specific plans to attack Poland and England. Jackson sought to link Hitler and his regime with European aggression through preventive war, that which is indefensible under international law.
Recently there has been talk from certain UN sources that if after that body's own investigation concludes that U.S. leadership engaged in such aggressive preventive war along with unjustifiable torture tactics and the hunting down of victims without recourse to the law, then arrests could be made on U.S. soil.
On this rationale such arrests could be made without the U.S. government being involved in any way, obviating any necessity of action on the part of congressional bodies or U.S. courts.
Should George W. Bush be so approached in a specific effort to arrest him under international law, it has been noted that he is accompanied by armed U.S. Secret Service agents to protect him.
To use a term from a sport President Barack Obama loves to play and watch, basketball, "The ball would be in his court"- and the crucial and ultimately decisive question of whether he would be willing under those circumstances to order Bush's Secret Service detail to "stand down"- in the interest of international law.