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Banned
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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Not a fan of Rosa Parks, eh?
Laws do not encompass all that is right and rational. Sometimes - often? - they are in direct opposition to the correct course of action....
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At Nuremberg, US prosecutors defined pre-emptive war as a crime againt humanity, the
Rosa Parks had no role in originating the Alabama racial segregation law she was arrested for breaking:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/
The US government, on the other hand, was directly responsible for defining aggressive war as a crime against humanity, and prosecuted others for that crime, and then executed them after finding them guilty.
Robert L. Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, speaking August 25, 1945:
Quote:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm
...We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy....
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It is clear to me that US leaders ordered and wage illegal, aggressive war against Iraq:
Quote:
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/75.html
State University of New York at Stony Brook Radio (WUSB)
Mort Mecklosky Interviews Benjamin B. Ferencz.
December 22, 2003
...M: OK. Nazi war crimes, okay. And we’re talking international law. I understand that it’s a violation of international law to go to war without approval of the UN Security Council when not under armed attack. Is that true?
F: Well, there are differences of opinion. In my opinion, any violation of the United Nations charter is a violation of international law. Since the charter supercedes all national laws and has been accepted and ratified by all of the member states. The charter says specifically that you are prohibited from the use of armed force except under very restricted circumstances. And those are if you are subjected to a direct attack by someone else and until the Security Council can respond to restore order, you can defend yourself. Those were not the conditions which existed in the case of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. Now, there are some international lawyers who take a different view and they say the charter was written before the nuclear age and you can’t expect any nation to wait to be destroyed before it responds to a nuclear attack. And therefore they invented the excuse that Saddam is creating weapons of mass destruction and has them and is ready to go and we have to, therefore, intercede even though it does not comply with the UN charter. So we do have this division of opinion and since we don’t have any enforcement mechanism on an international scale despite the charter requirement that we set up an international military force we’re stuck with the kind of situation we have today.
M: Now, if Saddam Hussein or any nation has the nuclear weapons and we consider them a threat are these people saying we can go and invade them and go to war against them? Is that their position?
F: Well, that seems to be the administration’s position, that preemptive strikes are permissible. It’s preemptive self-defense. My difficulty with that is that laws have to apply equally to everyone and if we assume that we have that right you must assume that other nations have the same right. And that would certainly pose an immediate threat from such countries as North Korea, which we know has such weapons, and India and Pakistan and Israel and France and England and all the other nations that may have nuclear weapons now or in the near future so this doctrine of preemptive self-defense, to me, is a prescription for self-annihilation in the long run.
M: According to that we can then, in their minds, go to war against North Korea or any of the other nations that have nuclear weapons if someone here feels that they are a threat.
F: That would be the logic of the president’s recently declared policy for the United States.
M: How many lawyers, international lawyers of international law agree with that, or are most of them critical of the US and its invasion?
F: I think most of them are critical, there are a few who d agree with that for example State Department lawyers and Pentagon lawyers but most – not only those, there are some academic lawyers who take the same point of view and it’s a conservative point of view – of those who believe that armed force is more important than the force of law.
M: Alright, so in your view, the US is guilty of violating international law.
F: In my opinion, yes, if we did have a legal test of that I would reach that conclusion.....
http://www.legalhistory.com/LargeFra...&N=Ferencz0506
Benjamin Ferencz (May 2006)
Benjamin Ferencz studied jurisprudence under Roscoe Pound at Harvard, and after World War II served as Chief Prosecutor in The Einsatzgruppen Case, a war crimes proceeding held at Nuremberg subsequent to the work of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). In this case, the first to recognize crimes against humanity, Mr. Ferencz stated: "Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution. We ask this court to affirm by international penal action, man's right to live in peace and dignity, regardless of his race or creed.....
...The Legal History Project interviewed Mr. Ferencz in May 2006.
How did you come to be involved in the Nuremberg trials?
As a student, my career path was focused on crime prevention. At Harvard Law School I won a scholarship for my exam in criminal law and did research for Professor Sheldon Glueck, America's leading criminologist, who was writing a book on war crimes. Upon graduation, I entered the U.S. Army as a private assigned to an artillery battalion being trained for the invasion of France. When U.S. troops reached Germany, I was assigned to the HQ of General Patton, who had been directed to set up a war crimes program in fulfillment of promises by world leaders that Nazi criminals would be held to account. I investigated murders of allied flyers who had been shot down and beaten to death by German mobs. I entered various concentration camps as they were liberated by the U.S. army and secured evidence of criminality. I witnessed scenes of incredible inhumanity and prepared reports for trials by U.S. Military Commissions that took place in the Dachau concentration camps. On the day after Christmas 1945, I was honorably discharged as a Sergeant of Infantry and awarded five battle stars for not having been killed or wounded.
Shortly thereafter, I was urged by the Pentagon to return to Germany with the simulated rank of Colonel, to do essentially what I had done as a Sergeant. I finally agreed to go as a civilian with that simulated rank. The Nuremberg trial by the IMT was then in progress, The decision had been made that there would be another dozen trials at Nuremberg to bring to justice the broad panorama of German society that had supported the Hitler regime that had made the crimes possible. Telford Taylor, one of Justice Jackson's key assistants at the IMT trial, was appointed to head the "Subsequent Proceedings" under U.S. auspices. Taylor persuaded me to join him and assigned me to set up an office in Berlin to find the evidence needed for the planned additional trials.
As Chief Prosecutor in The Einsatzgruppen Case, which involved German officers of death-squads that murdered over a million people during World War II, you obtained convictions for all 22 defendants, plus 13 death sentences. Can you describe your work in preparing and conducting this case?
A Berlin researcher discovered a complete set of top-secret reports by Nazi extermination squads called "Einsatzgruppen" (EG) operating on the Eastern front. They described how more than a million Jews, Gypsies and other perceived enemies of the Reich, including women and children, were systematically exterminated by the EG units. Taylor was convinced that a new trial, that had not been scheduled, was required and named me as the Chief Prosecutor in what was surely the biggest murder trial in human history.
I decided to rely on the official German reports which showed the place and time of the executions, the number of victims, and the SS commander in charge. I did not desire any witness testimony because there were few survivors and because documents were much more reliable. I had 3 assistants and each one was assigned to prepare the case against different defendants. I rested the prosecution's case after 2 days. Each of the 22 defendants was entitled to choose his own German defense counsel plus one assistant. Their denials and alibis took several months and an equal time to be rebutted.
Could you describe the Einsatzgruppen defendants, and what it was like to see them regularly in court? One often reads about the "banality of evil," but how did these men strike you as human beings? Were they all unblinking fanatics, or do you think some had qualms or regrets about their activities?
I never spoke to any defendant outside of the courtroom. I wanted to know them and judge them only on their own records of their deeds. They showed no remorse whatsoever. They were convinced that their deeds were justified. The lead defendant, SS General Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, whose unit killed about 90,000 innocent people, sought to justify the slaughter as self-defense. <H3>He argued that Germany knew that the Soviet Union (despite the non-aggression pact) was preparing to attack Germany. A pre-emptive strike was therefore necessary. It was "known" that Jews supported the Bolsheviks and that Gypsies were untrustworthy, hence they had to be eliminated. Since the children of victims might grow up to be enemies of the Reich they too had to be killed. It was all very logical, in the eyes of the murderers. Not in mine, nor in the eyes of General Telford Taylor or the U.S. judges.</H3> All of the defendants were convicted, and 13 were sentenced to death.....
....In closing, what projects are you working on at the moment?
Although I am in my 87th year, I am still determined to do my best, for as long as I can. I receive about 100 e-mails per day. I lecture, write, appear on TV and radio, and teach wherever I can. My main focus now is on only two "projects." I am trying to tell the American public the truth about the ICC. The current administration, following the insistence of former Senator Jesse Helms and his protegés who are still in office, are trying to undermine the ICC or kill the baby in its cradle....
....My final goal is to keep alive the main achievement at Nuremberg by Justice Robert Jackson and unanimously affirmed by the General Assembly of the U.N.,<H3> that aggressive war is not a national right but an international crime.</H3> The ICC lists it as a crime but the court cannot exercise its jurisdiction until very onerous conditions are met. There will never be a war without atrocities since war is the biggest atrocity of all,<H3> and illegal war-making is the greatest crime of all....</H3>
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
The Legality of the Iraq War
........On the eve of war, the British Attorney General's abbreviated statement of March 17 was accepted as legal approval of the official US/UK line. Not everyone in the British government could agree that the war that was about to begin was legal.
Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."
Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943)
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Last edited by host; 11-21-2007 at 03:57 PM..
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