Getting
Away with Murder: America’s War Criminals and Their Accessories
Kill one person
and it’s called murder.
Kill tens of thousands
and it’s called foreign policy.
Ross Laffan
War is an act of
murder.
Albert
Einstein
Politicians who
authorize, promote or condone war are surrogate murderers.
And so, too,
must be included their accessories.
The author
The Crimes of
War
I
share the late Albert Einstein’s opinion and have myself written what I think
is an airtight argument that war is neither necessary nor just.1
Since murder is universally regarded as a crime it follows that all wars,
covert or overt, are crimes and thus unlawful.
According
to the Crimes of War Education Project, a collaboration of journalists, lawyers
and scholars, “the most comprehensive and accepted list of international
humanitarian law offenses is set out in the Rome Statute governing the
International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague.”2 The ICC
recognizes three basic categories of crimes; genocide, crimes against humanity,
and war crimes. Whatever the three are called by the cognoscenti they are all
crimes against humanity. Within the third category there are nearly 50
variations of how to kill in war. It is a legalese splitting of dead hairs as
far as I am concerned.
Lineup of
America’s War Criminals and Their Accessories
Let’s
limit the line up to the ones still living. Otherwise, the line would stretch
back 240 years.
According
to Professor Frances Boyle, an authority on international law, “more than 30
top U.S. officials, including presidents G.W. Bush and Obama, are guilty of war
crimes or crimes against peace and humanity, legally akin to those perpetrated
by the former Nazi regime in Germany.”
“In
the Middle East and Africa U.S. officials involved in an "ongoing criminal
conspiracy" either participated in the commission of the crimes under
their jurisdiction or failed to take action against them included, Boyles said,
“both presidents since 2001 and their vice-presidents, the secretaries of State
and Defense, the directors of the CIA and National Intelligence and the
Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff and heads of the Central Command, among others.”
“Besides
the presidents, Boyle identified as war criminals Vice Presidents Dick Cheney
and Joseph Biden; Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates and Leon
Panetta; Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Hillary
Clinton; National Security Advisors Stephen Hadley, James Jones, and Thomas
Donilon; Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and James Clapper
and Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) Directors George Tenet, Leon Panetta, and
David Petraeus.”
“In
the Pentagon, war criminals include the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and some Regional Commanders-in-Chiefs, especially for the U.S. Central Command
(CENTCOM), and more recently, AFRICOM. Besides Chairman General Martin Dempsey,
U.S. Army, JCS members include Admiral James Winnefeld Jr.; General Raymond
Odierno, Chief of Staff of the Army;
General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps; Admiral Jonathan
Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations; and General Mark Welsh, Chief of Staff of
the Air Force.”
“Those
who have headed the Central Command since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
include Lt. General Martin Dempsey; Admiral William Fallon; General John
Abizaid; General Tommy Franks; Lt. General John Allen; and current commander
General James Mattis. General Carter Ham of AFRICOM bears like responsibility.”3
I
would lengthen considerably Professor Boyle’s list. War criminals could not be
surrogate murderers without the help of their accessories, people who contribute
to or aid in the commission of the murders. Accessories are legion. They
include key members of the “shadow” government (i.e., CIA, NSA), Congressional
leaders, leaders in the military, leaders in the war industry and on Wall St., including
investors in the war industry, and who knows the rest?” I would not add combat
personnel. While they volunteered for duty they risk their lives solely for the
self interests of America’s corpocracy.
Inverted Justice
A
line up facing America’s entire law enforcement and criminal justice system
ought to keep prosecutors and courts busy and prisons full for years. But that
is not how America’s inverted justice system works. America’s war criminals and
their accessories get away with surrogate murders while America imprisons
children for life and puts away for life petty, recidivist thieves.4The
powerful of America make the laws, interpret the laws, and then break them with
impunity. The powerless, the vast majority of ordinary Americans, had better
watch their step or else.
As
far as I know not one of America’s living war criminals or their accessories
have ever been prosecuted in an American court. Symbolic courts such as tribunals
have found some of the war criminals guilty in absentia but such tribunals
amount to pretend justice.5 Two towns in Vermont, Brattleboro and
Marlboro, voted to arrest Bush and Cheney but these two war criminals simply
avoid justice by avoiding those towns.6
Neither
has the International Criminal Court (ICC) ever hauled America’s war criminals
and their accessories into its court. The reason is not because the U.S. has
refused to be a signatory to the ICC since any signatory nation harmed by U.S.
militarism can file a suit against the U.S. The reason is because this court
also practices inverted justice by prosecuting war criminals in weak nations
and not also war criminals in powerful nations.7
Total
absence of justice domestically and internationally in the course of human
affairs would turn those affairs into barbarism. The power elite of America’s
corpocracy are slowly heading the U.S. and the world in that direction. It is imperative,
therefore, especially in matters of war and peace, that justice is served, and
that is why the search for ways to bring America’s war criminals and their
accessories to justice must continue. If never held accountable for their
crimes the crimes will continue by some of the same and some new faces.
In Search of Justice
A Roadmap to
Prosecution
Citizens’
Arrests
A
former Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, has argued that “no
Federal, state or local statute says there is any person who can't be
prosecuted for murder.”8 Such a legal opinion opens the door to the
use of citizen arrests of America’s war criminals and their accessories. At
least two peace and antiwar organizations, War is a Crime, and Code Pink,
promote this approach and provide tips on how to proceed.9 A Code
Pink member attempted a citizen’s arrest of Karl Rove, who helped mastermind
the propagandized build up to the Iraq War in the Bush administration.10
In another failed attempt to arrest Mr. Rove the citizen attempting it was
taken to court for trespassing. When asked by the judge what the charge was,
the defendant’s answer was that she was attempting to arrest Mr. Rove, to which
the judge replied, “It’s about time.”11 If only a real case against
the war criminals could be brought before him!
At
first blush Citizens’ arrests may seem like cul de sacs to avoid since they are
unlikely to lead to any arrests, let alone prosecution and conviction, and that
was my initial thinking. On second thought, though, the approach does offer a
modicum of “stage one” accountability in that targeted persons probably
experience some embarrassment, carefully choose when and where to appear
in public, learn to look over their
shoulders, and hire body guards.
Search for Bold District
Attorneys
Mr. Bugliosi
said that, of the 2,700 district and county attorneys having the power to
prosecute, "There should be one prosecutor bold enough to say 'No man is
above the law'. I am looking for that courageous prosecutor and I am not going
to be satisfied until I see George W. Bush in an American courtroom prosecuted
for murder."12 He was quoted in 2008. I see no record of his
having found any and learned at the same time that his search had ended. He
died in 2015.
Our roadmap
needs to pick up where he left off by continuing the search in communities like
Brattleboro and Marlboro to find prosecutors willing to locate and represent
some war inflicted cases (e.g., PTS cases, suicide cases) that would give them
standing in court, and then file a barrage of lawsuits to convince judges to have
the charged war criminals hauled into court.
Beseech the
President-Elect
I
mailed to Barack Obama a speech I proposed that he deliver for his first inaugural
address promising a peaceful America. I never got a response.13 I
will try again with President-elect Donald Trump since some knowledgeable
observers think his foreign policy will be less militaristic and imperialistic.14
A legion of Americans doing the same might eventually give the world a more
peaceful president.
Seek
International Justice
It
may be fanciful to expect the power elite of America’s corpocracy to ever allow
members of their own kind, the war criminals and their accessories, to be
brought to justice. The Court of Last Resort may have to be the ICC. Despite
its history of fecklessness in the face of transgressions by powerful nations
there is cause for some optimism. The ICC’s prosecutor has said recently that
she had a “reasonable basis to believe” that American soldiers committed war
crimes in Afghanistan, including torture and that a full investigation was
likely.15
I
have signed a petition asking the ICC to prosecute U.S. war crimes. I encourage
readers to do the same.16 Thousands if not millions of signatures
would probably be needed to persuade the undecided prosecutor.
On the Road
We
know who America’s war criminals and their accessories are. We know what crimes
they have committed. We know what must be done to prosecute them. What we do
not know is whether there will be enough Americans on the cyberspace road to the
ICC to convince it to carry out its responsibility to serve justice for all
aggrieved people of the world regardless of how powerful or powerless their
nations are.
Notes
1.
See, e.g., Brumback, GB. America’s
Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. Create Space Independent Publishing
Platform, 2015, 253-259.
2.
See http://www.crimesofwar.org/about/crimes-of-war/
3.
Ross, S. More than 30 Top U.S. Officials
Guilty of War Crimes, Boyle Says. Opednews.com, December 11, 2012.
4.
See Giroux, HA. The United States’ War on Youth: From Schools to Debtors’ Prisons.
Truthout, October 21, 2016; and also, Marks, A. The Impact of '3 Strikes' Laws
a Decade Later. The Christian Science Monitor March 10, 2004.
5.
See Duffett, J. Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International
War Crimes Tribunal. O'hare Books, 1968; also, Ridley, Y. Bush Convicted of War
Crimes in Absentia. Foreign Policy Journal, May 12, 2012.
6. Sullivan, A. Vermont Towns Vote to Arrest
Bush and Cheney. Reuters, March 5, 2008.
7. Roberts, PC. Little War Criminals Get
Punished, Big Ones Don't. Opednews.com, July 16, 2008.
8. Ross, S. Conference on War Crimes Yields 20
Recommendations, Including Impeachment.
Daily
Impeachment News, September 18, 2008.
9. See http://www.codepink.org/, and http://warisacrime.org/
10.
Mail Foreign Service. Code Pink Protester Attempts a Citizen's Arrest on Karl
Rove at Book Signing. Daily Mail, May 12, 2010.
11.
Armbruster, B. Judge on Rove’s Citizen Arrest: ‘It’s About Time.’ Think
Progress, August 1, 2008.
12.
Ross. Op. Cit. 2008.
13.
Brumback. Op. Cit. 188-189.
14.
See, e.g., William Blum’s Anti-Empire Report #147, What Can Go Wrong? November
30, 2016.
15.
Sengupia, S. & Simonsnov, M. U.S. Forces May Have Committed War Crimes in
Afghanistan, Prosecutor Says. New York Times, November 14, 2016.
16. See http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/people-of-the-u-s-and-world-ask-icc-to-prosecute-u-s-war-crimes
