Should Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes?

[Kirkland Laing]

There's a HUGE difference between trying Slobidan "Genocide" Milosevic and George "Cocaine" Bush and Tony "Pseudo-labor" Blair. I loathe Bush, and to a lesser extend Blair, and almost everything they stand for, but to think that they could be tried for war crimes, or that their respective nations would allow that to happen is absurd.

There is a huge difference. Milosevic was a rank amateur compared to B and B, death toll in the tens of thousands and only hundreds of thousands ethnically cleansed. They're clearly guilty of unambiguous war crimes, whether their countries would abide by the international laws that they're supposed to be the world's foremost upholders of and hand them over for trial is something else entirely.

What is the definition of "war crime" that you are using? The deaths of innocent civilians happens in every war. Lies about the reasons behind the war happen in every war. Torture happens in every war. Executions happen in every war. And so on.

If you want to argue against the morality of the wars of the ruling class, then I can agree with you. But to say that the Iraq war is somehow worse or fundamentally different than previous conflicts is ridiculous.

And when has the U.S. ever presented itself as the "foremost upholders" of international law? They regularly ignore international agreements and anything else which would put constraints on them from the outside.

Read the quote art thing I did. Planning to start a war under false pretences is a war crime, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, America's own prosecutors at Nuremburg. WW2 was America's finest hour, and after WW2 America felt so strongly about holding future criominals to account for their war crimes that

The French and the Russians had at first objected to the whole concept of crimes against the peace . . . But those Allies gave ground when [U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert] Jackson made it clear that the criminalizing of, and the imposition of individual punishment for, aggressive wars, now and in the future, were so important to the U.S. that if the Charter failed to do so, the U.S. was prepared to abandon a joint trial.

Bernard D. Meltzer
The Nuremberg trials : a prosecutor's perspective
December 2002





The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

Crimes against peace: (i.) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii.) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

International Law Commission of the U.N.
Principles of the Nuremberg tribunal
1950





Certain binding legal principles, affirmed unanimously by the UN, emerged from the Nuremberg trials . . . It was made absolutely clear that law must apply equally to everyone. Putting the captive enemies on trial was seen by America's Chief Prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, as "the greatest tribute that power has ever paid to reason." His successor General Telford Taylor, my chief and later law partner, was more succinct: "Law is not a one-way street."

Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz
Remarks on the International Criminal Court
March 11, 2003

And the treaty the US and Britain were in violation of is the UN Charter, which both countries have signed up to, and which takes precedence over their respective domestic laws. Bush and Blair tried to get the UN to agree to sanction the war, failed, and went ahead anyway. After the war we were told by Bush that Saddam had refused to let the inspectors in, that previous UN resolutions against Iraq authorised the war, and a bunch of other stuff, all of which was a pack of lies. Just before the war Bush even admitted he didn't have the authority :

WASHINGTON — President Bush vowed yesterday to attack Iraq with the "full force and might" of the U.S. military if Saddam Hussein does not flee within 48 hours, setting the nation on an almost certain course to war.

Bush delivered the ultimatum hours after his administration earlier in the day admitted failure in its months-long effort to win the blessing of the U.N. Security Council to forcibly disarm the Iraqi leader. The United Nations ordered its inspectors and humanitarian personnel out of Iraq, and Bush urged foreign nationals to leave the country immediately....



Earlier in the day, British and U.S. diplomats, facing certain defeat on the Security Council, withdrew a resolution that would have cleared the way for war. Though Bush on Sunday vowed another day of "working the phones," it quickly became clear that as many as 11 of 15 council members remained opposed and the effort was abandoned by 10 a.m.
The withdrawal of the resolution without a vote was a double climb-down for Bush. On Feb. 22, he had predicted victory at the United Nations, and on March 6 he said he wanted a vote regardless of the outcome.......






Bush defiantly asserted a right to attack Iraq, even without sanction from the Security Council. "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security," he said. "The United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority. It is a question of will."


http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Mar/18/ln/ln11a.html




And the UN say the war is illegal :

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.



BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq war illegal, says Annan

And that's without going into all the torture stuff, another bunch of war crimes for which there are already dozens of cases being brought in European courts against B and B, something that will continue for years. Bush won't travel but Blair will spend the rest of his life having to check with any country he's flying to to make sure there isn't a warrant out for his arrest, like Henry Kissinger still has to.