Summary
For the crimes of torture and murder, several low-level servicemen and women have been prosecuted and punished. But the perpetrators of the cause of all these crimes, of the war itself, and the authorizers of excessive force and torture, remain at large. In fact, they remain in the White House and the Vice President’s mansion. They remain in command of the most powerful armed forces in the world. With their history of deceit and criminal intent, this is a very dangerous situation.
ONLY the House of Representatives has the power to do anything about this situation.
What is the precedent for the responsibility of those at the very top of the chain of command?
Principle III of the Nuremberg Tribunal
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Justice Robert Jackson made the case thus:
…the idea that a state, any more than a corporation commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. …The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of states.
…But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of them was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power. Their responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that fictional being, "the State", which cannot be produced for trial, cannot testify, and cannot be sentenced.
The Charter also recognizes a vicarious liability, which responsibility recognized by most modern systems of law, for acts committed by others in carrying out a common plan or conspiracy to which a defendant has become a party. I need not discuss the familiar principles of such liability. Every day in the courts of countries associated in this prosecution, men are convicted for acts that they did not personally commit, but for which they were held responsible because of membership in illegal combinations or plans or conspiracies.
Justice Robert Jackson made the further statement:
But the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law. And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.
Including the United States itself, that means. Jackson asked whether those responsible for the devastation of war should not be held responsible:
“Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have "leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law."
The Tribunal answered in the affirmative, holding the architects of the war to account. Similarly, today I and millions of other American citizens ask you the same question. Shall these criminals be held to account?
We ask not that the crimes be punished by hanging or imprisonment, but only by hearings to ascertain evidence as to whether they should be removed from their offices. That means an impeachment proceeding.
If you say that there is no crime, Justice Jackson’s words answer you thus:
They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are..." If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
Madam Speaker, if there is no crime, then there has been no war, there are no dead. There have been no tortured, no taxi drivers gratuitously beaten to death by the forces of democracy. There are no dispossessed millions crowding in Jordan and Syria, prostituting their daughters to buy food. There are no grieving American mothers, children, parents, husbands, wives mourning over flag-draped coffins sent back from Iraq.
Madam Speaker, in citing your recent legislative accomplishments as an excuse for avoidance of your responsibility to bring justice, you are painting your house as its foundation crumbles at your feet. But it is not just your house, this edifice of American democracy. It belongs to all of us. Only now, you have the power to act to begin rebuilding its foundation, the rule of law.
Respectfully submitted,
(Note, feel free to plagiarize and send letters to your own reps and to the Speaker!
:rant:
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