Today the US and Israel are seen throughout the world as war criminal states.
- From: bromselick@xxxxxxx
- Date: 29 Aug 2006 11:30:22 -0700
Bush Turns His Terror War on the Homeland --
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS --
When I was a kid John Wayne war movies gave us the message that America
was the good guy, the white hat that fought the villain.
Alas, today the US and its last remaining non-coerced ally, Israel, are
almost universally regarded as the bad guys over whom John Wayne would
triumph. Today the US and Israel are seen throughout the world as war
criminal states.
On August 23 the BBC reported that Amnesty International has brought
war crimes charges against Israel for deliberately targeting civilians
and civilian infrastructure as an "integral part" of Israel's strategy
in its recent invasion of Lebanon.
Israel claims that its aggression was "self-defense" to dislodge
Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Yet, Israel bombed residential
communities all over Lebanon, even Christian communities in the north
in which no Hezbollah could possibly have been present.
United Nations spokesman Jean Fabre reported that Israel's attack on
civilian infrastructure annihilated Lebanon's development: "Fifteen
years of work have been wiped out in a month."
Israel maintains that this massive destruction was unintended
"collateral damage."
President Bush maintains that Israel has "a right to protect itself" by
destroying Lebanon.
Bush blocked the attempt to stop Israel's aggression and is, thereby,
equally responsible for the war crimes. Indeed, a number of reports
claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
Bush has other war crime problems. Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief
prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that
President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side by side with
Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990
invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US
Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US
War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled
in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military
tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.
President Bush and his Attorney General agree that under existing laws
and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his
government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has
instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War
Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
One of Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions
to anyone in any American court.
Bush's other change would protect from prosecution any US government
official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the
Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place
whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating
and degrading treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes,
this change would also undo Senator John McCain's amendment against
torture.
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice
says that Bush's changes "immunize past crimes."
Under the US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is
impermissible. What do Americans think of their President's attempts to
immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel
and civilian contractors from war crimes?
Apparently, the self-righteous morally superior American "Christian"
public could care less. The Republican controlled House and Senate,
which long ago traded integrity for power, are working to pass Bush's
changes prior to the mid-term elections in the event the Republicans
fail to steal three elections in a row and Democrats win control of the
House or Senate.
Meanwhile, the illegal war in Iraq, based entirely on Bush
administration lies, grinds on, murdering and maiming ever more people.
According to the latest administration estimate, the pointless killing
will go on for another 10-15 years.
Trouble is, there are no US troops to carry on the war. The lack of
cannon fodder forces the Bush administration to resort to ever more
desperate measures. The latest is the involuntary recall of thousands
of Marines from the inactive reserves to active duty. Many attentive
people regard this desperate measure as a sign that the military draft
will be reinstated.
According to President Bush, the US will lose the "war on terror"
unless the US succeeds in defeating "the Iraqi terrorists" by
establishing "democracy in Iraq." Of course, insurgents resisting
occupation are not terrorists, and there were no insurgents or
terrorists in Iraq until Bush invaded.
Bush's unjustified invasion of Iraq and his support for Israeli
aggression have done more to create terrorism in the Muslim world than
Osama bin Laden could hope for. The longer Bush occupies Iraq and the
more he tries to extend US/Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, the
more terrorism the world will suffer.
Bush and the Zionist/neocon ideology that holds him captive are the
greatest 21st century threats to peace and stability. The neoconized
Bush regime invented the war on terror, lost it, and now is bringing
terror home to the American people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@xxxxxxxxx
.
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