ONLY IN AMERICA
The killing of Osama bin Laden may provide some measure of justice to relatives, co-workers and friends of the dead on September 11; and to the survivors themselves.
But what about justice for the relatives and the friends and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of dead from all causes in President Bush's senseless, made up war of empire and revenge and diversion against the people of Iraq as a reaction to bin Laden's terrorist attacks? The war was based on lies and propaganda and fear tactics and intimidation; a criminal war by any and all measures of the most heinous of all crimes.
Where is the justice for the millions more who were injured or tortured or driven from their homes in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the carnage we unleashed against Iraq which overnight turned out the ruling Sunni minority and replaced it with the long oppressed Shiite majority?
Where is the justice for leaders who first approved of torture in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions and then bragged about it their self serving memoirs that earned them millions?
Where is the justice for those who ordered the systematic destruction of Fallujah, which today has an abnormally high rate of birth defects from all the depleted uranium our weaponry deposited in the soil we so ruthlessly and callously desecrated?
It is a sad commentary on American justice that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice cannot safely travel outside the US without fear of arrest for war crimes. They will live out their lives in glorious wealth and splendor, earned in part from their very criminality; but they can do so only as long as they reside in the country that only looks forward rather than backward when it comes to cleansing its own dirty war crime laundry.
The Nuremberg War Crime Trials established the principle that looking forward instead of backwards when dealing with the instigators of criminal war is not an option.
Except it is...but only in America.
But what about justice for the relatives and the friends and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of dead from all causes in President Bush's senseless, made up war of empire and revenge and diversion against the people of Iraq as a reaction to bin Laden's terrorist attacks? The war was based on lies and propaganda and fear tactics and intimidation; a criminal war by any and all measures of the most heinous of all crimes.
Where is the justice for the millions more who were injured or tortured or driven from their homes in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the carnage we unleashed against Iraq which overnight turned out the ruling Sunni minority and replaced it with the long oppressed Shiite majority?
Where is the justice for leaders who first approved of torture in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions and then bragged about it their self serving memoirs that earned them millions?
Where is the justice for those who ordered the systematic destruction of Fallujah, which today has an abnormally high rate of birth defects from all the depleted uranium our weaponry deposited in the soil we so ruthlessly and callously desecrated?
It is a sad commentary on American justice that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice cannot safely travel outside the US without fear of arrest for war crimes. They will live out their lives in glorious wealth and splendor, earned in part from their very criminality; but they can do so only as long as they reside in the country that only looks forward rather than backward when it comes to cleansing its own dirty war crime laundry.
The Nuremberg War Crime Trials established the principle that looking forward instead of backwards when dealing with the instigators of criminal war is not an option.
Except it is...but only in America.
posted by Walt Zlotow at 7:52 AM
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