FULL CIRCLE

In 1945, the year I was born, America took the lead in ferreting out and prosecuting war criminals. We defeated Germany and Japan and immediately began the process which culminated in the Nuremberg War Crime Trials of 1945-46 which were followed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for war crimes stemming from their involvement in World War II.
Most defendants were convicted, resulting in death or long prison sentences, but some were acquitted; indicating a basic fairness in the process.

Much of the discussion we hear today about investigating and possibly prosecuting high ranking members of the Bush administration for launching pre-emptive war and implementing a wide scale policy of torture, is based on international criminal law developed from the Nuremberg Trials, most noteworthy of which is the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949.

We don’t know whether or to what extent Bush administration officials are guilty of criminal conduct under international criminal law. We do know that, by calling this alleged conduct a “mistake”, and saying we must “look forward, not backward” so we can devote our energies to shore up a collapsing economy, we are telling the world that America is no longer the leader in riding the world of war crimes, but quite possibly a chief practitioner of same, and most certainly an unashamed apologist for it.

In my 65th year it is disheartening to see that America has come full circle on this issue.