> From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
>
>
> On Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:55:47 -0500 "Max B. Sawicky"
> <sawicky at bellatlantic.net> writes:
> > I thot international law consisted of whatever
> > the U.S. says it does, at least in matters like
> > this.
> >
> > Couldn't all this legal mumbo-jumbo be misleading
> > to soldiers, insofar as it is supposed to be a guide
> > to their rights? For all practical purposes they
> > have no right to disobey, as far as I can see.
> >
> > It's impossible for me to imagine the rest of the
> > world prosecuting and punishing Americans for crimes
> > committed under the aegis of the USG.
>
> Well of course, the only reason why the Nazis were proscuted
> for war crimes, at the Nuremberg trials, was because
> they had been defeated in WW II, so the principles
> that were laid down there have always had the taint
> of "victors' justice". Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable,
> that captured US POWs, whether in Iraq, or some future
> war could be brought to trial, by the country that had
> captured them under the principles that were laid
> down in Nuremberg.
>
> Jim F.
> ********
CB: It might be a good idea to get some good mumbo-jumbo out there to counter all that bad mumbo-jumbo Bushollini is putting out.
The solidiers in Viet Nam who took anti-war actions were risking their careers and lives; so anything important like this involves someone having courage to face serious possible consequences :no progress without struggle, and all that.
Actually, we are experiencing right now something of a situation where the U.S. is not dictating international law in the UN Security Council refusing to knuckle under. History may place some illegitimacy on the U.S. war because of that. There is a good chance that it will not be recorded as legal, i.e. recorded as illegal , even. Perhaps in a generation , with a shift in the balance of force or a revolution, that will be a basis for forcing the U.S. to pay reparations.
One way to erode and perhaps begin to overturn the rule of might makes right is for some of the puny to take risks, standup, resist overwhelming odds, like the French Resistance, the Viet Namese people, John Brown, David vs Goliath, Toni Smith the basketball player, Rosa Parks, et al. The Nazi war machine. like that of the U.S., was the mightiest in the world at the time. Perhaps the Fourth Reich formed by the U.S. will not last a thousand years, even though there is no Red Army in sight right now.
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