I came across a posting on a news group that began with this 61-year-old quote.
If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. And we are not pre- pared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defend- ants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.
-Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the first of the
Nuremberg trials.
President George W. Bush and his Administration has gleefully violated every single treaty,charter and convention in waging "War on Terror". He made a complete mockery of the Geneva Convention by issuing an Executive Order that interprets the text in a way that legalizes CIA's 'Enhance Interrogation Techniques' including water-boarding and other forms of cruel methods that the Bush Administration does not consider as torture.
President Bush and his neocon hawks went after Saddam Hussein for allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction, but today is aggressively pursuing a nuclear first strike policy. Saddam Hussein was tried, convicted and hanged for committing mass murders, but the US-led invasion has cost the lives of a million Iraqis.
Sadly, as the poster on the new group points out, this hypocritical attitude of impunity will not end when Bush leaves office. Most of the candidates at the 2008 elections, including the Democrats have shown that crimes against humanity are not crimes if America commits them. Barack Obama, who vehemently opposed the war in Iraq, is today calling for nuclear strikes against Iran and Pakistan. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are on the same boat. If Democrats are bad, the GOP candidates are worse. If one leaves Ron Paul out, there is near-unanimous support for perpetual war, torture and for all other criminal acts against humanity in the Republican camp.
Until a leader emerges in the US who is willing to heed those words uttered 61-year-ago, history will judge America harshly.
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