Victor's Justice

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From: Sid Shniad <shniad at SFU.CA>
>Subject:      Victor's justice
>To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YORKU.CA
>
>From Regarding Henry Kissinger, a forum held on February 22, 2001, 
>at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  The forum was 
>moderated by Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine, and was 
>broadcast live by C-SPAN:
>
>
>"Victor's justice, as in Nuremberg, applied our version of 
>international law to the defeated enemy.  It did not apply our 
>version of international law to our own people who admitted war 
>crimes.  There is documented evidence of this.  For example, the 
>note was passed to the court during the trial of the 
>commander-in-chief of the German navy, Admiral Doenitz, saying it 
>was a war crime for him personally to be involved in the 
>unrestricted submarine warfare decree that Germany had made. 
>Admiral Nimitz submitted a letter saying that under orders from 
>Washington, he had issued an identical decree on December 7, 1941. 
>As far as I know Admiral Nimitz has never been tried for the crime 
>for which Doenitz was convicted.  He was never even hauled before a 
>domestic tribunal.  In fact, if I remember correctly he was given a 
>ticker tape parade.
>
>The notion that an international criminal court will work, 
>therefore, assumes that we are prepared to have our people tried for 
>the same things that we say others violate international law by 
>doing.  It has never, never happened except in victor's justice 
>courts.  Never - I repeat, never."
>
>-- Alfred Rubin, Distinguished Professor of International Law at the 
>Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and the 
>author of The Law of Piracy (Transnational Publishers, 1998) and 
>Ethics and Authority in International Law (Cambridge University 
>Press, 1997).