Ever read the transcript of the trials? They sound like an indictment of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, top to bottom.
Closing Statement
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htmHere's some excerpts:
Certain admitted or clearly proven facts help answer that question. First is the fact that such war of aggression did take place. Second, it is admitted that from the moment the Nazis came to power, every one of them and every one of the defendants worked like beavers to prepare for some war. The question therefore comes to this: Were they preparing for the war which did occur, or were they preparing for some war which never has happened? It is probably true that in their early days none of them had in mind what month of what year war would begin, the exact dispute which would precipitate it, or whether its first impact would be Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland. But I submit that the defendants either knew or were chargeable with knowledge that the war for which they were making ready would be a war of German aggression. This is partly because there was no real expectation that any power or combination of powers would attack Germany. But it is chiefly because the inherent nature of the German plans was such that they were certain sooner or later to meet resistance and that they could then be accomplished only by aggression.
It's been confirmed that the Bush administration planned to invade Iraq long before 2002. Indeed some members of the administration planned this even before 2000. That shows pretty clearly that the invasion of Iraq was a War of Aggression under Jackson's standards.
"I noted that Hitler had a definite view of the impotency of protest and, as a second point, that he was of the opinion that Germany should be freed of the peace of Versailles. We did not say we shall have to have a war and defeat our enemies; this was the aim, and the methods had to be adapted to the political situation." When asked if this goal were to be accomplished by war if necessary, Goring did not deny that eventuality but evaded a direct answer by saying, "We did not even debate about those things at that time." He went on to say that the aim to overthrow the Treaty of Versailles was open and notorious and thatI quote again"every German in my opinion was for its modification, and there was no doubt that this was a strong inducement for joining the Party." Thus, there can be no possible excuse for any person who aided Hitler to get absolute power over the German people, or who took a part in his regime, to fail to know the nature of the demands he would make on Germany's neighbors.
Replace Hitler with Bush, and 'Versailles' with 'The UN', and what do you have?
These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's Government that emerges. It was composed of:
A Number 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination program although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecutions of that race;
A Number 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy;
A foreign minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy;
A field marshal who issued orders to the Armed Forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice;
A security chief who was of the impression that the policing functions of his Gestapo and SD were somewhat on the order of directing traffic;
A Party philosopher who was interested in historical research and had no idea of the violence which his philosophy was inciting in the twentieth century;
A governor general of Poland who reigned but did not rule;
A Gauleiter of Franconia whose occupation was to pour forth filthy writings about the Jews, but who had no idea that anybody would read them;
A minister of interior who knew not even what went on in the interior of his own office, much less the interior of his own department, and nothing at all about the interior of Germany;
A Reichsbank president who was totally ignorant of what went in and out of the vaults of his bank;
And a plenipotentiary for the war economy who secretly marshaled the entire economy for armament, but had no idea it had anything to do with war.
This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.
I swear to God, if that doesn't sound like the last four years of the Not-my-fault Bush Administration, I don't know what does!