Current lessons of Nuremberg ignored by Dodd

The title of former Senator Christopher Dodd’s New York Times op ed intrigued me. ‘The Lessons of Nuremberg Must Be Continually Relearned’. Maybe, I thought, a highly respected former senator would address America’s endless war crimes in the Middle East and Africa. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. abandoned all pretense of following the lessons of the Nuremberg war crime trials that held the Nazis responsible for aggressive war and its resulting millions of victims. Today, aggressive war with millions of victims remains the foundation of U.S. foreign policy. We may be on the brink of another aggressive war, this time against Iran.

Dodd was honoring his father Thomas J. Dodd, on the 75th anniversary of his address as prosecutor before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Dodd quoted chief prosecutor Robert Jackson who told the Tribunal “These were crimes so ghastly that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated”.

But instead of calling out America’s senseless, perpetual wars these past 20 years that have slaughtered hundreds of thousands and sent tens of millions fleeing our bombs, Dodd offers simple platitudes that “The path of peace through the protection of human dignity for all is still before us. Human rights, the rule of law and even truth itself are threatened by continuing violence”. Whose violence, Senator Dodd? Not one word on the pass that America and the world has given to the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations to completely ignore the lessons of Nuremberg. Dodd closes with “Today, the trial is an important reminder that facts matter, the truth matters and the rule of law matters.” Sadly, none of that truly matters to former Senator Christopher Dodd.