Dear Gov. Dean -- On Passing the "Nuremberg chalice" …

[understandinglife]

10 December 2005

November 20, 2005, was the 60 year anniversary of the commencement of the Nuremberg trials. As Scott Horton noted:

These tribunals gave force to the concept that international law was not just about relations between nations. International law also created obligations for individuals, who could be subject to trial and severe sanction. America was the most aggressive proponent of this course, and the American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, was extremely conscious of what this meant for his country. "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."

Today it seems that Jackson’s poisoned chalice truly is pressed to the lips of the United States, or more particularly, those of George W. Bush.

Link: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/nuremberg-at-sixty-is-jacksons.html

Gov. Dean, it is important to reflect on several aspects of what happened at Nuremberg, but the one I want to bring to your attention today involves the mere act of planning aggressive war.

Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal established the legal basis for trying individuals accused of the following acts: Crimes against peace: the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.

International Committee of the Red Cross
The evolution of individual criminal responsibility under international law
September 1999

Link: http://billmon.org/archives/002335.html

Numerous accounts of the Bush administration planning “pre-emptive” (aka aggressive) war on Iraq exist and among the more credible are statements made by Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. O’Neill’s comments to 60 Minutes in January, 2004, include:

"From the very beginning (of Bush’s administration), there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview to be aired Sunday night.

But O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, said he had qualms about what he asserted was the pre-emptive nature of the war planning.

"For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," according to an excerpt of the interview that CBS released Saturday.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/7egau

As to avoid mixing metaphors, I’d say that indeed it was a “huge leap” – a “huge leap” to the front of the line of those whom an American Tribunal will necessarily serve doses from the “Nuremberg chalice.” The ‘record on which history will judge us tomorrow’ is solid and pertinent:

And so by means of careful preparation in the diplomatic field, among others, the Nazi conspirators had woven a position for themselves, so that they could seriously consider plans for war and begin to outline time tables, not binding time tables and not specific ones in terms of months and days, but still general time tables, in terms of years, which were the necessary foundation for further aggressive planning, and a spur to more specific planning.

And that time table was developed, as the Tribunal has already seen, in the conference of 5 November 1937, contained in our Document Number 386-PS, Exhibit USA-25, the Hossbach minutes of that conference, which I adverted to in detail on Monday last.

In those minutes, we see the crystallization of the plan to wage aggressive war in Europe, and to seize both Austria and Czechoslovakia, and in that order.

U.S. Prosecutor Sidney Alderman
Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. II
November 29, 1945

Link: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/11-29-45.htm

From the Niger forgeries to the several "Downing Street" documents to neoconsters documents like “Clean Break,” it is obvious that aggressive war on Iraq was something Bush intended to do irrespective of truth or law.

Politics-as-usual for the National Election of 2006 has been superseded by the crushing criminality of Bush’s regime and his numerous enablers in the US Congress and the Supreme Court. That criminality now extends to systematic destruction of everything from the Voter’s Rights Act (as evidenced by events within the Department of Justice) to the confluence of scandals a la Abramoff.

However, most damaging of all is we are now a Nation that plans war of aggression, commits war of aggression, illegally occupies other Nations and tortures and kills.

If we do not hold the “Nuremberg chalice” firmly to the lips of Bush and all those within his neoconster regime who have committed crimes of war and inhumanity, then the chalice passes to each and every one of us.

"America, Or Not?" – the choice will be a result of how we hold our leaders accountable, now.

Thank you for your continued leadership,

Peace.