Jim Devine :
-clip-
Not being an international lawyer, I don't know if that's "genocide" or not, but it doesn't matter to me whether it's a matter of intention ("I want to kill children") or carelessness ("it doesn't matter if children die if we attain our goal"). I'm sure that Pol Pot didn't really _want_ to kill however many people his regime killed. Instead, as with Albright, the deaths were collateral damage arising from his efforts to attain his goals.
^^^^ CB: That's the right idea: carelessness or recklessness. Reckless indifference to human life is equivalent to intentional.
If someone intentionally drives a car into a crowd of people and kills someone, they can be charged with murder ( intentional killing) even though they didn't specifically intend to kill
the person who dies or anybody , and were "just" being reckless.
There is further specificity of intent with genocide in terms of the "killing Iraqis as Iraqis", but that hurdle can be gotten over by the pattern and history of racist U.S. mass murders.
Bottomline: A colorable charge of genocide can be made against the U.S. There is probable cause to believe that the U.S. committed genocide. Lets go to trial ,and let a jury decide.
"The court will set bail at 1000 trillion dollars. "
^^^^^
Chuck Grimes:
Yes, I certainly agree. But there is also a problem with the term geneocide that needs to be firmed up.
To use the word to characterize a war sets up a conceptual conflict over terminology that involves race and ethnic group. If we (or I) believe that there is no such thing as race or ethnic group from a biological point of view, that these are socially or culturally defined groups, then the term genocide becomes problematic. For example is a national identity distinguishable in more than the formality of citizenship?
In other words, historically one of the key concepts required to make genocide possible, was the concept of race, ethnicity, possibly lanuage, religion and culture. The obvious example here is the historical identification of German Jews as Jews and not Germans. In the US case, the obvious parallel is the identification of African Americans, as a race, therefore not really Americans. In a related way, Native Americans were identified as a race.
^^^^ CB: Yes, like all terms, it is impossible to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies arising in its usage ( See, even, the history of mathematics). Nonetheless, "I gotta use words when I talk to you" , as we used to say in undergrad, when we were talking about Russell's paradox and all that.
Race is an invalid biological concept. But it is a valid historical and political concept. Europeans imposed their racial categories on the world, and since they had so much power in the last 500 years, they were able to give significant actuality to their conceptions. There are political and social "races", even though the term originates originally as an invalid biological category.
The Europeans were committing genocides for centuries before the word was invented. I just saw a show on the Armenian genocide, and they interviewed Raphael Lemkin, who invented the word. He mentioned the Turkish genocide against the Armenians and the German genocide against the Jews as the basis for him inventing it. So, it took genocide against European or close-European (Christian Armenians) to get the concept and word. Once we have the idea, we can apply it to the other historical examples, such as the genocide against indigenous American peoples, and then apply it currently. Lemkin let the cat out of the bag. Now some people spend time trying to put it back in, narrow the ideas scope of applicability. It's like "fascism": only the Nazis were fascists; only Jews , and few others , were victims of genocide. Afterall, otherwise use of the term becomes "meaningless" - NOT !
-clip-
Carrol Cox: Both of you (Chuck and Charles) are providing a cover-up for capitalism, denying its evil and claiming instead that all would be well if it weren't for the criminals leading it. This makes a mockery of the life work of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg . . . .
^^^^ CB: No you are slandering the life and work of Marx , Engels , Lenin etc. who were clear in seeing the connection between racism-genocide and capitalism, colonialism and imperialism; and in integrating the issues, as in their focussing all on the slogan "Workers of all countries , unite !" , and then Lenin "Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World , Unite !". They brilliantly integrated the two on a materialist basis. Now you , as a phony Marxist, try to tear the issues apart. The fight against genocide is a central task of the world working class in defeating world capitalism. Your effort to split these issues is a disgraceful disservice to Marxism. You are not arguing as a Marxist here, but as a racist , anti-communist, a defamer of Marx, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro.
What the hell do you think Fidel Castro would say about your comments here ? He would denounce you.
^^^^
The Nazis killed the Jews _as_ Jews. The u.s. is slaughering the Iraqis in the same way that during WW2 Germans slaughtered Russians and Russians slaughtered Germans. That is, the u.s. is pursuing certain national objectives, which involve controlling Iraq. Did the Germans put Jews in command of Dachau?
Carrol
^^^^^^ CB: The Nazis articulated genocidal motives in their attacks on the SU, considering Russians and all Slavs as an "inferior race". The attack on the SU was a Crime Against Peace AND a Crime Against Humanity ( genocide).
You slander the Russians in comparing their killing Germans to the Germans killing Russians and others in the SU.
Not only that. You don't even understand the Nazis capitalistic motives for hating Jews. Do you think that the Nazis and their anti-Semitism, somehow, are not subject to a historical materialist analysis , class analysis of their racism ? If so, you are wrong. You betray Marxism in claiming that Nazis war on Jews is outside of the scope of materialist analysis.
^^^^^
Marvin Gandall
The 1948 International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defined the act as "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".
Charles and others neglect the crucial qualifier "as such".
^^^^ CB: No I don't neglect it. I'm acutely aware of it. It is a primary thing in my mind on this. I've been studying the UN Convention you quote for twenty-five years. I am probably one of the world leading experts on it by now. Are you familiar with the 1950 "We Charge Genocide" petition of Attorneys Patterson and Robeson ? How about the campaign to get the U.S. to sign onto it 40 years late ? I was part of the latter. I was part of a campaign to apply it to fascistic racist groups in the U.S. In the course of all that I became completely aware of the "qualifier", of course.
^^^^^^^
Someone might want to argue that Bush and Clinton were determined to destroy Iraqi nationals at least "in part" - that part being Saddam Hussein and the apparatus which maintained he and the Baath party in power, but that the other Iraqi deaths were unintentional "collateral damage".
^^^ CB: Of course someone is going to argue that. Bush and Clinton's defense attorneys in the trial ( Sounds like you, Jordan, Chris and Carrol should sign up for the defense team). I'm with the prosecutor, and we say there is evidence of the specific intent to kill Iraqis _as Iraqis_.
Often in legal cases, there are disputes over interpretations of the law. You are saying that the defendants didn't have sufficient _mens rea_ for the crime, that they didn't have the specific intent required by the "statute". But we are arguing otherwise, and it is not at all clear that we are wrong or you are right. There is probable cause to believe that the defendants had sufficient _mens rea_, specific intent to kill Iraqis as Iraqis.
^^^^^^^
But even this would be wrong. The Baathists were destroyed for political reasons, not national or ethnic ones, not as Iraqi nationals "as such", but as Iraqi opponents of US Mideast policy.
^^^^^ CB: I say the motives were multiple. Included in the motives were the intent to kill Iraqis as such. And you have no more direct evidence of your claim than I do of mine.
^^^^^
Without dscounting the horrific atrocities, the same is true of the alleged "genocides" in Kosova, Vietnam, Chechnya, etc., as Chris rightly points out.
^^^^^ CB: Chris and you are wrong on Vietnam.
Try this: the war on Vietnam was racist. That's pretty much the common usage describing genocidal motive. Are you really going to sit up here and claim that the war on Vietnam was not racist ?
^^^^^^
These were brutal military operations designed to crush resistance infrastructures integrated with the civilian populations by any means necessary.
^^^^ CB: I interpret the anti-genocide statute as applicable to that situation. There is a "statistically significant" correlation between these types of U.S. operations on nations of peoples of color as opposed to white nations.
Secondly, in U.S. law, there is the _mens rea_ of recklessness. There's neglegence, recklessness and intentional(ness). A reckless mentality can be sufficient to replace "intentional" in some cases. The U.S. cannot get away with saying we had to kill the civilians because they were in with the military. Their killing of the civilians is murder, i.e. intentional killing. I say , given the racist history of U.S. leaders, there was also specific intent to kill Iraqis as Iraqis.
It is not necessary to find some U.S. official hating Iraqis or colored peoples. Only to show the reckless indifference to the destruction of Iraqi lives as compared with U.S. lives and other white people's lives.
By the way, one of the Turks' defenses against the charge of Armenian genocide is that the civilians were mixed in with Armenians who were fighting the Turks.
Maybe you have heard of the de facto / de jure distinction in U.S. Civil Rights. Even the U.S. judges recognized that racists coverup their motives. Finding a "smoking gun" , like a school board member saying "we have to segregate our schools" soon became unlikely. Courts can look at the facts ,and infer discriminatory (racist) intent.
Similarly, we can infer genocidally specific intent from the fact pattern of U.S. racist mass killings in general.
^^^^^^^
In Rwanda, Tutsi men, women, and children were rounded up and murdered "as such". Same as the Judeocide. In each case, there was no significant resistance infrastructure in place when the systematic massacres of the entire population occured. If there had been such, the mass exterminations would likely have been averted although there would still have been widespread death and destruction in these communities . .