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Old news. Obvious. Bears Repeating.
A 'Humbled' News Media?By Robert Parry
April 4, 2006...
By failing to expand the criticism of Bush beyond success or failure, the mainstream U.S. news media implicitly embraces Bush’s assertion of a special American right to attack wherever and whenever the President says.
It’s still out of bounds to discuss how the Iraq invasion violated the Nuremberg principle against aggressive war and the United Nations Charter, which bars attacking another country except in cases of self-defense or with the approval of the U.N. Security Council.
Indeed, in the mainstream U.S. press, there’s a smirking attitude whenever international law is mentioned, much like the contempt expressed by President Bush in his quip, “International law? I better call my lawyer.”
To one extent or another, nearly all major U.S. news outlets have bought into the imperial neoconservative vision of an all-powerful United States that operates outside of international law. This perspective can be found among the loudmouths at Fox News as well as in the more tempered columns by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.
So, the debate over the Iraq War’s legality has been limited mostly to the Internet and to the foreign press. Despite growing mainstream U.S. doubts about whether the Iraq War was “worth it,” there are almost no second thoughts about whether it was a war crime.
Yet there is a strong argument that the United States should begin facing up to how Bush’s actions violated the rules laid down by the
Nuremberg Tribunals, which held that aggressive war was an offense so severe that it justified execution.
...
Whether or not we were lied to, whether the war was worth it or not, whether it was mismanaged or poorly planned... are not the real question. Perhaps the false claims in these areas deserve rebuttal, but the heart of the matter isn't even discussed.
If our presence there is the continuation of a crime, and it is, should we stop? Should our policies there change? No easy answers there.
If it was a crime, and no reasonable person can think it wasn't, shouldn't our leaders be tried and punished? Well, they very well might be but for two facts, (a) the U.S. seeks to be above the law and so did not participate in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and (b) the U.S. is the world's "superpower" and not even the ICC would dare try to hold us responsible, regardless of guilt (which is how Blair has avoided prosecution as well, since the U.K. is a signatory)(interestingly, if someone from a non-signatory nation is wanted by the ICC and they travel to a country that is a member, they can be arrested; alas, the court is too afraid to consider the issue so Bush travels freely).
Justice, in this case, is not only blind but afraid.
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