Tuesday, November 29, 2011
On George W. Bush and War Criminality 1
Saddam Hussein attempted genocide on the Kurds. He invaded not just one but two of his neighboring countries. He repressed and brutalized his people to the tune that has rarely been chronicled in recorded history. And he continuously thumbed, with impunity, his nose at the U.N. I guess what I'm trying to say here, people, is that it's not exactly like we invaded Denmark or something....................................................................................................Now, was it necessarily a wise thing for us to have invaded Iraq and attempted to instill democracy there? I would personally (and, yes, vociferously, too) say, no. We had the son of a bitch well contained and could have battered him around as needed. Couple that with the fact that a) Iraq was multi-ethnic pseudo country with intractable hatred and b) Hussein was basically the only buffer that the Sunni countries and Israel had against Iran and, no, no sir, I really don't think that invading Iraq and STAYING was the most prudent of policies....................................................................................................But to site George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals, a designation that I most commonly associate with the likes of Pol Pot, Pinochet, the Third Reich, the Hamidian regimes of Turkey, Milosevic, and even frigging Hussein himself, seems, well, you know what it seems like.
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People are calling Bush a war criminal because of his accused illegal actions, not because of Hussein's actions. And his original reasons for invading Iraq had nothing to do with installing democracy. Democracy was never given as a reason for war until after the war was started.
Creating a democracy is NOT a legal reason for invading a sovereign foreign country.
Hell the Saudis are much more repressive then Saddam ever was over their entire population.
By your reasoning we should have invaded the Saudis for the way the treat their women.
Jesus Christ,I've got tears rolling down my cheeks.This shit happened 10 years ago.
Is there something more pertinent to bitch about? May I suggest.
Solyndya
Fast & Furious
Falling approval ratings
Newt
Iran storming the British Embassay.
Come on kids its much more topical then something from 10 years ago.
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
This shit happened 10 years ago.
and Ted Kennedy's auto accident happened how many years before that?
You know the one YOU keep bringing up.
Speaking of Ted Kennedy....do you realize its going on three years since he's had a drink....thats the longest he's gone without booze since he was 12 years old.
Jerry, yes, WMD was in fact the stated rationale. But regime change and democratization were also seen (shortsightedly, I grant you) as the likely eventualities.......And also let me point out here, Vietnam never attacked us, either. Does that make LBJ a war criminal, too?......How 'bout Korea? They never attacked us, either. Does that make Truman a war criminal (what, as long as the U.N. gives us the OK, then we can attack countries that never attacked us?)?......And what about Libya? Yeah, there was the Lockerbie bombing but other than that, they never attacked us, either. Does that make Mr. Obama a war criminal? It just seems to me that there is a lot of selective condemnation going on here.
37927 (and didn't I tell you not to post here?), the Saudis indeed are shit (an exceedingly repressive regime that has also sponsored Wahabism). But they never perpetrated an extermination policy on any segments of their population like Mr. Hussein did.............And what about with Libya? One of the stated reasons for our intervention there was the fact that Gadaffi was more than likely going to slaughter his people. He hadn't even done it it and we were still intervening. That (our intervention) could have easily gone south in a hurry.............And, please, let me state ut again, I was AGAINST the intervention in Iraq. My only purpose with this post was to supply some context and perspective.
Bush IS a war criminal according to the standards used at Nuremberg circa 1945-1949.
His and his associates fit the definitions used to try the Japanese at the same time.
sorry but those are the facts will.
The attack is not the problem. It is the rational for the attack. There are justifiable reasons for one country to attack another. But lying to create those justifiable reasons is not allowable.
Assuming that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie and Johnson was involved in it, yes that makes him a war criminal.
Making up false excuses to get us into a war makes you a war criminal whether you are a Democrat or a republican and you should be put in jail for the rest of your life.
It makes you a traitor and a mass murderer!
Okay, so, believe it or not, I agree (for the most part) with the more liberal commenters here.
Going to war is never how one establishes democracy. Sorry, I've been to the Sandbox. The last thing these people understand is democracy. To be blunt, seeking to give these people democracy is like giving a 3-year old a brand new car.
I remember 911. I remember Osama bin Laden's name being tossed about. I remember thinking, "We need to kill that fucker." Next thing I know, we are bombing the shit outta Iraq. Um...Iraq? No one in their right mind thought ObL was in Iraq. We knew Hussein was, but not ObL.
Methinks GWB went to Iraq to finish the job his daddy couldn't finish. And for how many years was ObL allowed to live after 911? Yep. Too fricking many years.
If we would have simply gone to the Sandbox with the mission to kill, period, and leave all that 'establish democracy' nonsense to the politicians, we would have finished that job a hell of a lot quicker. True story. We go, we search, we find ObL, and we kill him. But what did we do?...we went after Hussein, instead.
I'm still scratching my head over this one.
No one likes war. No one thinks it's a good idea. It's only supposed to happen, if you will, when your back is against the wall. When the Japanese Empire blatantly attacked us in 1941, that was a no-brainer in deciding what we should do.
911 presented us with a different kind of enemy. For sure, we needed to go and find those responsible and kill them, definitely. But GWB screwed the pooch and f-ed it all up. He went after a toothless lion, aged and scared, and let ObL run free.
So, is Bush a war criminal? Hmm. Nah. He was just a jackass, looking to get mean, old Hussein so his daddy could sleep better at night.
Jerry, you get points for consistency. If Bush is a war criminal here, then so, too, was LBJ.
If Bush is a war criminal here, then so, too, was LBJ.
Knowing what I now know about the Gulf of Tonkin, I'd agree.
ecc102, I agree with 95% of what so eloquently stated. My only difference is with the motivation. I tend to agree more with Richard Haas. He says that Bush was looking for something big after 9/11 (to show the country that he was serious about fighting terrorism) and thought that Iraq would be an easy mark. It proved to be a mega miscalculation by a fellow (Bush) who apparently didn't even know the difference between a Shia and Sunni. If Mr. Bush was guilty of anything, in my opinion, it was negligence/stupidity...................And I still want to know about Obama. He intervened in Libya to prevent Gadaffi from slaughtering his population. Saddam Hussein killed FAR more Arabs and Persions than Gadaffi ever did. If Bush had intervened in Iraq based solely on humanitarian grounds, would it THEN have been OK (I would have still said no because we needed Hussein as a counterbalance to Iran)?
If Mr. Bush was guilty of anything, in my opinion, it was negligence/stupidity.
According to Nuremberg, Bush wasn't stupid, because of the coordinated campaign to push the American people into the War with Iraq. Bush ET AL meet the necessary definition of War of Aggression
To Wit;
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation.
Regime change is by definition is subjugation.
Robert H. Jackson, the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, stated:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Bush's actions, even if stupid, still fit this definition fully.
Will,
I'm digging what you're saying. However, allow me to dig deeper. I'm going to kinda go off-topic here, but not too badly.
Should America, as a general rule, intervene when there is genocide being committed in foreign nations that have their own sovereignty?
This is a loaded question, of course. I would welcome any and all readers to comment freely, provided you limit your comments to ones that do not berate, ridicule, or mock me. That would be so kind, and so greatly appreciated. (I've had my fill these days of jackasses on both sides of the fence.)
Looking forward to any and all responses.
If history is any teacher, then we intervene only when our "national interest", like oil, is at stake. Intervention has little to do with people.
They are the excuse, not the reason.
Should America, as a general rule, intervene when there is genocide being committed in foreign nations that have their own sovereignty?
That is what the UN is all about, however if you remember circa 2002-03, genocide wasn't the excuse, WMD's were. Thus Colin Powell's ill-fated speech to the UN
Since the intell fell flat on it's face and NONE were found like Bush Rumsfeld Cheney ET Al claimed, the genocide, protect the people, create democracy excuse was pushed forward.
The NATO not Obama mandate in Libya did use the UN and genocide to LEGALLY enforce UN mandates on a rouge nation.
to wit;
17 March 2011: The UN Security Council, acting under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, approved a no-fly zone by a vote of ten in favour, zero against, and five abstentions, via United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The five abstentions were: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Germany. Less than twenty-four hours later, Libya announced that it would halt all military operations in response to the UN Security Council resolution.
On 19 March 2011, a multi-state coalition began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which was taken in response to events during the 2011 Libyan civil war.
So unlike will's assertion, the UN approved NATO led Libyan operation was as legal as the US actions in Korea, during the 50's.
So, if the UN supports aggression against a country that did not attack us, that makes it morally OK? Is there not a moral plane higher than that of an organization that fully craps on Israel while giving many other countries carte blanche? And what about Clinton? He dropped some bombs on Iraq, too. And what about the sextupling of the drone attacks by Obama in Pakistan that have literally killed thousands of innocents - the only justification being that the government of Pakistan accepts our hush money? Is there not more than enough "war criminality" to go around?
Will, I answered a question and presented the facts,
However your questions seem a little like moving the goal posts when your previous assertion didn't pan out.
ecc102, wow, it's dicey. It (our intervention) seemed to have been effective in Kosovo and in Libya (stopping the slaughter and no U.S. casualties). But, like the numbers fellow says, it has to be coordinated with other countries and our mission majorly defined. Iraq, obviously, was neither (though, yes, we did have the Brits and the Poles).............Actually, I have a hypothetical, too. What IF Saddam was on the cusp of a nuclear weapon (for certain)? And what IF the U.N. didn't sanction a strike against him? Then what? Would it still be a war crime if we turned to rubble this capability? And was it a war crime when the Israelis took out Iraq's reactor in the '80s? I mean, I just don't see any of this as clear-cut (more moderate extremism, I guess).
Just looking for consistency.
What IF Saddam was on the cusp of a nuclear weapon (for certain)?
He didn't so questions like that help people who WANTED that to be true intellectually justify the very real war crimes of those who falsely asserted he did have them ....
.... that and of course the genocide diversion discussion, instead of the actual facts of the situation.
So, again, if Mr. Bush had said that it was a humanitarian mission to take out Hussein and had sited the the genocide (actual genocide, not the fear of genocide) of the Kurds AND had convinced the U.N., THEN it wouldn't have been a war crime?......And are the Poles guilty of war crimes, too, for being a part of the coalition? Can you say Pandora's Box?
Again, explain to me what exactly the war crime was?
And what about Clinton? He dropped some bombs on Iraq, too.
One in direct response to an attack on a former US President, that fortunately failed to Kill GHW Bush.
Other under UN sanctions for violations of both the peace accords Saddam agreed to to end the first gulf war, and other UN sanctions.
Clinton operated under UN mandates not wild cowboy like Bush did, sorry but facts matter once again. Were his actions perfect, no but they weren't war crimes under Nuremberg or UN rules, unlike Bush's actions.
"A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation." a) Bush argued self-defense. Now, was he lying, or was it group-think (as Scott McClellan posited in his book)/the cherry-picking of intel with motives that weren't totally impure? I don't know. I can't read Mr. Bush's mind. You apparently can. b) To say that this was for territorial gain is ludicrous. c) To say that this was a form of subjugation after the hundreds of thousands of people that Hussein himself killed is even more ludicrous. Why is it so difficult (as Jon Stewart asked Rachel Maddow in their interview) to believe that Mr. Bush was doing what he thought was right and it simply failed? Why do we have to attribute the most sinister of intents to those with who we disagree with?............And, no, I don't think that the U.N. approved of Mr. Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan OR Mr. Clinton's making of rubble in Iraq during his administration. War crimes - not so much?
Again, explain to me what exactly the war crime was?
An attack for only regime change is a war crime according to the UN and Nuremberg trials. Bush's declaration Saddam had to go or we invade means his actions were more about regime change then any other reason.
I know that might be hard to phantom, but that is simply the fact.
The UN had inspectors inside Iraq, in 2003 looking for WMD's, so the UN hadn't accepted the Bush intell story.
In fact the UN weapons inspector wanted more time to act, but Bush refused, and set a limited time limit for his preplanned invasion, which violated both the UN and Nuremberg established laws. Just because Bush ET Al are not sitting in the Hague, doesn't mean their actions were legal.
Remember no Soviet official even set in a Hague court, even though they also committed war crimes, like their illegal war in Afghanistan 1979-1988.
To say that this was a form of subjugation after the hundreds of thousands of people that Hussein himself killed is even more ludicrous.
Far from it, subjugation of the Iraqi people to Bush's opinion of who should be the leader of their country.
Actually ignoring that simple fact is even more ludicrous.
We have NO right outside of the UN Charter, of which the US willingly signed to change the leadership of any sovereign country. Neither did the Soviets in 1979, or any other country who has done the same.
They had elections, didn't they? Never had 'em under Saddam.
Why is it so difficult (as Jon Stewart asked Rachel Maddow in their interview) to believe that Mr. Bush was doing what he thought was right and it simply failed?
Because what he claimed was right was illegal under the UN Charter and Nuremberg trials. Bush has NO right under any existing legal principle to decide Saddam wasn't a legitimate leader of Iraq, especially if the Iraqi people weren't actively up in arms themselves, unlike the Libyan situation.
Hence his actions vis a vis Iraq 2003 were illegal IE a war crime no matter the stupidity.
That shouldn't be that hard for you to understand unless you do not want to philosophically.
They had elections, didn't they? Never had 'em under Saddam.
Irrelevant argument, because the actions were after the war crime had been committed, in fact the "elections" of 2004 were part and parcel of the war crime, we set up and determined who was eligible for election.
Nice try at moving the goal posts again though.
The action against Libya was SOLELY for regime change!
The action against Libya was SOLELY for regime change!
Yes but remember UN approved.
That means Obama didn't decide ON HIS OWN.
Bush DID, see the difference?
"Nice try at moving the goal posts again though." I was addressing the subjugation argument; that we were somehow subjugating the Iraqi people. We clearly weren't. Most of the deaths that occurred were Iraqi on Iraqi.
Damn your working hard NOT to understand the simplicity of the crime.
So, the U.N. determines aggression against a country that didn't attack any other country? That's the yardstick? Solely the yardstick?
that we were somehow subjugating the Iraqi people.
invading their country destroying their military and removing their government IS subjugation will, try not being so willfully dense on this one.
So, the U.N. determines aggression against a country that didn't attack any other country? That's the yardstick? Solely the yardstick?
Umm yes will and all the member states have agreed to that.
Might such in your opinion, however it is much better then the Soviet 1979 Afghan, German 1939 Poland, Japanese 1932 China, Bush 2003 Iraq models.
The UN route seems to be a lot less messy.
IE Kosovo, Libya, models.
such ...suck;
wish blogger had an edit feature.
Nothing is "simple", Clyde. And I really don't appreciate partisans coming to my blog and insulting me. I don't know what your issue is but if it has something to do with something that happened 4 years ago on Lydia Cornell's blog, you really need to get over it. Lydia has (we're Facebook friends - not that I ever go on Facebook very much). And what do you really want from me, anyway? I give you your say and I consider it? What in the hell else is there? You want me to agree with you on everything, every single cut and dry thing that you shimmy out there? I don't agree with anybody 100% of the time.
Nice attempt at a diversion from the facts.
What you always do when you cannot logically support your position with the facts.
Sorry you are so thin skinned.
I believe that I support my positions quite logically and it is you who are the narrow minded, "the Democrats are never wrong and the Republicans are never right" partisan who gloms onto conspiracy theories as readily as he breathes. We have a markedly differing conception of subjugation, so what! Does everybody have to buy hook, line, and sinker YOUR conception? My God, dude.
I believe that I support my positions quite logically
Far from it "dude".
You fail totally on internationally recognized legal definitions and openly question internationally recognized institutions, to "defend" your position,
who is the partisan?
it is you who are the narrow minded, "the Democrats are never wrong and the Republicans are never right" partisan
Please show me where I used either democratic or republican,
that is your schtick.
I used internationally recognized legal definitions which transcend the limited way you are attempting to redefine the discussion will.
who gloms onto conspiracy theories as readily as he breathes.
No conspiracy will, just the simple fact Bush didn't have the prerequisite international requirements met to do what he did.
But then again Neither did Brezhnev in 1979, when he sent soviet troops into Afghanistan.
We have a markedly differing conception of subjugation, so what!
Well mine fits the Nuremberg definition, and is what is used in the World Court.
Yours fits what ever your argument of the day is.
Does everybody have to buy hook, line, and sinker YOUR conception?
Only if you want a case heard in the world Court, you know will the place these things are tried under law.
PS: Will in case ya haven't got it yet;
It ain't "my" definition, it is the legal opinion of the Nuremberg trials, world court and UN General Assembly.
So your argument is actually with all of them.
My God, dude.
Yea I don't accept your sloppy reasoning, I get it.
So, the legality of any military enterprise is solely dependent upon whether or not China or Russia veto it? Sorry, me-buck, but, no, I DON'T accept that. The World Court? You want to bring Bush before the World Court? Fine, I don't have problem with that.............And by conspiracy theories, I was referring to the highly discredited October Surprise conspiracy theory about Reagan (which both the Congress and the independent press have thoroughly rebuked) and that whole "Bush knew that 9/11 was going to happen so he could have a new Pearl Harbor" theory that nobody outside of a lunatic asylum buys into. That's what I was referring to. And if you insult me one more time (sloppy reasoning, etc.), you are permanently done. Have I made myself perfectly clear here?
And I ask you one more time (wd apparently doesn't want to answer this one), was FDR a war criminal for his intentional targeting of major metropolitan areas that had absolutely ZERO military value? You're the international law expert here. Tell me. And what about Mr. Obama's incessant drone attacks into a nation that never attacked us? Is Mr. Obama a war criminal? Here, I'm giving you the opportunity to show us all that the Rs and Ds don't matter.
China doesn't veto = no war crime. China does veto = war crime. I mean, what kind of conventional stage 4 reasoning (you've probably never even read Kohlberg, huh?) is that? The law, the law is frigging wrong sometimes! And for any person to so rigidly apply a law so broadly that it actually puts Bush in the same frigging category as Hitler and Pol Pot is a scary, scary thing.
And I ask you one more time (wd apparently doesn't want to answer this one), was FDR a war criminal for his intentional targeting of major metropolitan areas that had absolutely ZERO military value?
No, during WW2 that wasn't a crime,
If Germany had won the war THEIR definitions would have been used, and I'm sure all three Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt would have been declared war criminals.
Simple enough?
On the second one first, I apologize for that. It was over the line and I shouldn't have said it. I was just frustrated because you were taking unprovoked shots at me.............On the second one, it wasn't a war crime...because we won? Me - I'm willing to say that the carpet bombing of Dresden (ordered by Churchill) in fact WAS a war crime/purely punitive act.
I was just frustrated because you were taking unprovoked shots at me.
I wasn't "taking shots" just expressing MY opinion, too bad YOU take it so personally.
Your opinions on the issues are fine. Stick to 'em, and we won't have a problem.
Your opinions on the issues are fine.
Nice to see your changing your ways.
The opinions were never the problem (not that I always agreed with them, obviously). It was the coming out of left-field with the digs and barbs that was the problem.
It was the coming out of left-field with the digs and barbs that was the problem.
Sorry will but coming from someone who says fuck you to my 15 year old daughter that is hollow at best.
I'm sure that your 15 year-old daughter has said worse. And, dude, I apologized. Don't be fucking with me after I apologized.
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