Bush Crimes Remain Unaddressed -- By Robert Zaller

Posted: 5/1/09

In 1945, the victorious Allied powers put the surviving members of the Nazi leadership on trial at Nuremberg. Most of Hitler's inner circle had perished or disappeared; the prize catch was Hermann Goering, Hitler's second-in-command and designated successor.

Goering was a piece of work. As director of the war economy, he had presided over a vast slave empire; as head of the air force, he had led the effort to bomb Britain into submission by targeting its civilian population. While not thus engaged in office business, he had looted the great museums of Europe to build a conqueror's art collection for Hitler, as well as a private one for himself.

The chief American prosecutor of the time, Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, was determined to proceed with a trial. Jackson and the Nuremberg judges believed that a crime might be a crime though no statute existed for it, and that the Nazis' Bia, unique in their scope and iniquity, cried out for punishment by whatever legal forum could be devised for them. Jackson added an important caveat: that the Nuremberg trials, if they were to serve as a standard of justice, had to be applied impartially to all future cases of so-called crimes against humanity, including state aggression, genocide, torture, and other deprivations of human rights. Nuremberg, he said, would ultimately be vindicated by the willingness of all to abide by the rule of law it established.

The criminal regime of George W. Bush, permitted to serve out its "term" by a cowardly and complicit Congress, has now been succeeded by a new administration saddled with the responsibility of clearing the docket. It is not enough, when crimes have been committed that clearly rise to the Nuremberg threshold (a planned war of aggression; genocidal destruction; systematic torture), to state that these crimes will not be committed any longer, particularly when the war at their root continues. Nor is it enough to publish white papers and to selectively release redacted memoranda. A full accounting is required, with trials as warranted, beginning for those with command responsibility, and punishment upon conviction.

President Barack Obama is well-advised to leave specific prosecutorial determinations to his Attorney General, Eric Holder. At the same time, he cannot avoid the executive decision to sanction prosecutions as such. On this subject he has been all over the lot, reflecting the furious inner debate within his administration over whether to act at all. He has seemed (but also seemed not) to favor a bipartisan commission of inquiry, although whether it would have full subpoena powers and the right to recommend prosecution is unclear. Hardly what Robert Jackson had in mind.

Obama has also stated in a press release, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution."

As a lawyer, he knows what weasel words these are. Retribution is unmerited or extrajudicial punishment; it is the very opposite of the justice established by applicable law and evidence in an appropriate court. As for reflection, exactly what conclusions shall we draw if we are unwilling to apply the Nuremberg precedent, most recently invoked in 2006 to try the very ruler of the country we illegally attacked, against ourselves? Saddam Hussein was executed on the sole count of having been responsible for the death of 148 Iraqis in a single incident. What punishment shall we deem fitting for President Bush, whose actions have resulted in the deaths of a million Iraqis, and several thousand Americans as well?

By framing the question as an issue of specific acts and policies of torture rather than as an overall plan of aggressive warfare, Obama has unacceptably narrowed the question of criminal responsibility, and focused attention on the executors of orders and the framers of memos, rather than on the chief architects of the war themselves-Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell. In doing so, he has also given himself license to continue the war they began, and thus to become complicit in their crimes. It's not, of course, that torture is an indifferent matter. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was subjected to a hundred different kinds of torture, and waterboarded 183 times in a single month. The devils in hell must have gathered round, notepads in hand. But even this must not distract our attention from larger crimes.

On the witness stand, Goering was arrogant and contemptuous, and often got the better of Jackson (as the judges privately admitted). Nonetheless, his conviction was a foregone conclusion. He cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell. If we are not to deny him a posthumous vindication, we must take the crimes of our own leaders as seriously as we took his. Otherwise, apologies will be in order, and we will be back to the beginning in dealing with crimes against humanity. Victors' justice will not do.

Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached at op-ed@thetriangle.org © Copyright 2009 The Triangle

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Robert Zaller reading one of his history-drenched poems recently - "The Dresden Zoo" - the images chill the bone - builds to quite a punch at the end - Dresden - vivid yet colorless reality - metaphor then/now - one of the lines: "Only the Sirens Were Silent" (I, the blogger here, ask, what about the Drones from the West droning out the joy of weddings and the simple play of children in Pakistan?

here

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Also, Andy Worthington's work is among the best corroboration of the points made above - keep reading his well-researched, thoughtful work:

here

And here's a classic quote fitting the article above by Zaller - requoted by Andy Worthington (see his top articles & the Comments) Andy's almost daily ONLINE work - as well as book - The Guantánamo Files - are a must for anyone who cares about the West's overdue return to the rule of law.

The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees ...
“In Andy Worthington's The Guantánamo Files, the whole story of the Cuban camp emerges as a ghastly experiment..." here

The problem with an administration like that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — devoted, unconstitutionally, to securing and wielding unaccountable executive power — is, as the British historian Lord Acton stated in a letter in 1887 (in a phrase that is often slightly misquoted), “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”