I would direct you to two of Telford Taylor's books on Nuremberg, war crimes & Vietnam: (1) _Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy_ & (2) __The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir_. Taylor was one of the chief prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials, Later, he was a professor at my Law School, so I feel a slight personal connection to him. A conservative, upper-class man, with a deep commitment to the "rule of law," and an idea that the rich and powerful should be held responsible for their actions -- he was a type of person who no longer seems to come to prominence in our society.
Taylor was quite aware why some atrocities were considered war crimes and others were not. He makes clear in these two books that "war crimes" and crimes against humanity were specifically written to exclude the crimes that were committed by the allies. Thus, before World War II public opinion in Europe overwhelming considered dropping bombs on cites (even if those cities were the location of munition factories) an atrocity, and that any leader who would make such a decision should be prosecuted. Very early in World War II, Britain far surpassed Germany in its infliction of civilian casualties by aerial bombing. At the time many within the inner circles were quite aware of the fact that Britain and the U.S. were engaged in "terror" bombing and the targets were only pretextually military. (The pretext was largely maintained for the home population.) There were a few clear eyed people at the time who realized the implications of what was happening (A. J. Muste, Dwight Macdonald) and wrote about it.
Telford Taylor also realized the implications of unrestricted aerial bombing by the time he became Nuremberg prosecutor. There were specific discussions on whether bombing of civilian populations should be considered a war-crime/crime-against-humanity. Taylor says that most of the lawyers/judges before the war would have unhesitatingly considered such actions war crimes, but times had changed. The conclusion was that the laws had to be specifically framed to make sure that the U.S. could not be held responsible for such crimes. One is reminded of Anatole France's comment on the infinite majesty of the law. Taylor does not draw specific conclusions but in his book on Vietnam, he does explain why under the Nuremberg laws carpet bombing civilian populations may be atrocities but may not be war crimes. He also discusses the problem of framing a law ex-post facto to include the actions of your enemies and exclude the actions of you and your friends. He was honest but he was too much of a patriot to draw the specific conclusions. (I believe that Chomsky has talked about aspects of this in his Amnesty International lecture but he seems to be talking from memory of reading Taylor's Vietnam book in 1970.)
I am only discussing above "the rule of law." But those of us who oppose atrocities must be clear. Hezbollah was engaged in terror bombings. We must not prettify it. But the question is whether tit-for-tat is supportable in this case. Both from a moral point of view and from a radical ("marxian-realist" (?), "anti-imperialist class struggle" (?)) the Hezbollah response may be supportable and justifiable. But unlike Carrol, whose impulses I sympathize with, I don't think that the question is settled. An argument has to be made. And the argument begins by assuming that targeting civilians should always be considered a war crime (even in a tit-for-tat situation) but circumstances of resistance may mitigate the severity of the war crime. All that I am saying, is after the fact, when there is time to consider, I would neither reject the point-of-view of Hezbollah nor the point-of-view of Amnesty International, when discussing Hezbollah's actions. I would consider the hypocrisy and effect of condemning Hezbollah, when Israel is responsible for 90% (more?) of the violence in the area. Let me say again, I am sympathetic to Carrol's point of view (stated in his sarcastic quip) but these things deserve to be thought through, morally, legally, and politically.
Jerry Monaco -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060915/ae46970c/attachment.htm>