American War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9

Are you a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? Then you had better hope that the military of the United State of America keeps the world at bay. Which is not likely to last forever, given that the U.S. government will become bankrupt if interest rates on its debts ever rise above an average of about 5%.

There is a precedent from the Nuremberg trials that allows Democrats and Republicans to be tried simply for being in those parties. Article 9 clearly states that for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity:

Article 9.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.

Thus it would only take one conviction of a Democratic Party or Republican Party official, living or dead, to turn all party members into criminals. As criminals they would lose their right to vote, which would allow non-war crimes political parties to gain the ascendancy, much as the Republican Party gained dominance after the Civil War by preventing Democratic Party leaders (who mostly had also been Confederate State leaders) from voting and running for office.

The Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of the United States Government, and hence of her leaders and citizens, loom large in history, and not just in the distant past. It is too big of a topic to begin to compass in a short essay. But to illustrate, we need look no further than the events that provided the context for the Nuremberg trials of German political leaders, the losers of World War II.

Defendants at Nuremberg Trial, Franz von Papen standing

First, let's touch on the arguments against the legality of the Nuremberg trials, their sentencing and convictions. The U.S. Constitution (in article 1, section 9) prohibits ex post facto laws, but the entirety of the Nuremberg apparatus was created without the traditional legislation involving statutes with clear punishments for clear crimes. The trial was conducted without a jury and with no appeals apparatus, and the trial judges belonged to the injured parties. Despite war crimes being widespread during the period concerned, the charter of the tribunal specifically limits itself to prosecuting members of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Because the very legal propriety of the Tribunal should have been the main question, Article 3 states: Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel.

Nevertheless, the way of the Law, and particularly Common Law, is that Nuremberg established a precedent. If other nations can hold a kangaroo court and prosecute (and execute) people for war crimes, then the United States of America can legally be subjected to such a court, should our defensive arsenal ever allow it. Or should we have the wisdom to constitute one ourselves.

After the first round of leading Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) officials and government leaders were convicted and hung until dead, the Nazi Party was declared a criminal organization by the tribunal. 8.5 million German citizens had been members, and many were soon tried in the Denazification Campaign, which was also ex post facto in nature.

The Nuremberg Trials were careful to not look too closely at how World War II actually started, repeating the lack of care of Allied historians for the timeline of events leading up to World War I. The judges refused to allow the defense to bring up that it was France that first declared war on Germany or that the German invasion of Norway at the beginning of of the war only managed to get there ahead of a British invasion by a few days. There was some small success, however, in the defense pointing to certain British and American war tactics, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, to push back against certain of the charges.

But, as is so often the case in the law, some mighty big fish got away because they were doing the prosecuting. The level of German bombing of British Empire targets in England was doubtless criminal, but nothing new, and nothing the British themselves had not done in 400 years of empire building. The unprecedented war crimes of World War II were Allied affairs: the complete destruction of cities by bombing, in particular firebombing, and eventually the atomic war waged against Japan.

Americans are so used to excusing their attacks on Japanese cities that they seldom can think clearly about war crimes. They excuse these attacks as military necessities. "Millions of U.S. soldiers would have died if we had been forced to invade Japan." But the U.S. was not being forced to invade Japan. The diplomatic history of the war is one of nearly continuous peace initiatives by the Japanese before, during, and right up to the end of the war, all spurned by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [Before the U.S. officially entered the war Roosevelt frequently decried bombing cities as a crime.]

If killing civilians is excused as a war crime because it saves lives of combatants, then the entire Nuremberg prosecution was flawed. The defense lawyers could have argued that Jews, foreign civilians and and German political prisoners who died in or were murdered in the concentration camps were impediments to military success, and that would have been true. The blitz against London could be interpreted as legally justified because it would have saved German lives in the invasion of England, had it taken place.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes plain and simple. President Roosevelt had died, so President Harry Truman made the ultimate decision. His advisors were all members of the Democratic Party. Only General Douglas MacArthur, who was a Republican and no bleeding heart, argued against the use of the atomic bomb on cities filled with civilians. He believed, correctly, that it stained the honor of American soldiers.

I see no reason for there to be a statute of limitations on war crimes organizations. The Democratic Party and Republican Party should be declared criminal organizations based on their past actions. Living leaders, mostly Presidents, who have committed war crimes, crimes of peace, or crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and punished appropriately.

The only real question is: what constitutes membership in these parties? Many more Germans voted for the Nazi Party in elections than actually belonged to the party. Party membership was clear: one paid one's dues and received a membership card. In the U.S. the parties don't keep membership rolls. It is hard to say if registering to vote in the primary of a political party actually constitutes becoming a member of a party. Certainly donating money to a party should be held as the rough equivalent of paying membership dues to the Nazi Party.

I guess we'll have to sort that out when be set up our Peace and Justice Tribunal. I'd like to hold it in Philadelphia, to remind us that crimes against humanity are in the U.S. DNA, and that restitution has never been made for the wars against native American tribes or for slavery, indentured servitude, or the more subtle crimes of the ruling class of this nation.

Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings War Crimes?

The United States of America exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and over Nagasaki on August 9th. While both cities in Japan hosted military bases, the vast majority of causalities were civilians. An estimated 150,000 died at Hiroshima including 20,000 soldiers and 20,000 Korean laborers. About 80,000 died at Nagasaki, and while military manufacturers were destroyed, relatively few soldiers died there.

One of the most basic ideas of war crimes law is that the purposeful killing of civilians is a war crime. Yet most Americans believe that the atomic bomb use was justified in this case (the only use of atomic bombs other than for testing, ever, in world history.)

The typical American defense against charges of war crime is that it saved the lives of large numbers, potentially millions, of American soldiers who would have died if Japan had been conquered by conventional means. Is it therefore not a war crime to kill civilians if that achieves military objectives like decreasing military casualties? Other, often better, defenses against the war crimes accusation will also be considered here.

Some background information will be useful in this discussion. The war between Japan and the United States began in 1854 when a U.S. fleet of warships under Commodore Perry seized Okinawa and then used the threat of further force to induce the rulers of Japan to end their long commitment to isolation and peace [See Okinawa, Commodore Perry, and the Lew Chew Raid]. Relations varied over the following decades, then disintegrated in the 1930s when the U.S. continued to support the right of itself and European nations to have colonies, economic spheres of influence, and puppet governments in Asia, while denying that Japan should be able to play by the same rules.

Before the war began President Roosevelt gave numerous speeches condemning nations that dropped bombs from warplanes into cities. He demanded that all nations refrain from targeting civilians.

Rather than capitulating to demands from the U.S. that Japan become a third-rate power again, and watching the rapid building of a vastly superior navy, air force, and army in the U.S. in 1940, the Japanese military and the government they controlled decided to gamble on a first strike, which took place at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 [See Pearl Harbor, China, and The Cable].

There is no denying that, before the atomic bombs were dropped, Japan was losing the war. Yet President Harry Truman and most U.S. military leaders did not feel the war was going particularly well. While the U.S. had overwhelming sea and air power, the Japanese had adapted their ground defenses to minimize that advantage. At the Battle of Okinawa alone the U.S. had lost 49,151 soldiers. Estimates of U.S. deaths from conquering Japan started at around 1 million, and that was probably a very conservative number. While nothing compared to the 11 million Communist soldiers who had died fighting Adolf Hitler's army, it was a dismaying number to Americans who were tired of war.

Politically, President Truman's hands were tied. His predecessor, Democratic Party kingpin President Roosevelt had demanded unconditional surrender from Japan. When the a-bombs were ready Truman repeated that demand in the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese had always been open to a negotiated peace, even before the war began, but had never been willing to surrender unconditionally. Up until then no nation in Japan's position (still holding its mainland, many Pacific islands the U.S. military had "hopped" over, most of China and all of Korea) had ever been expected to surrender unconditionally. It was against the basic understanding of the laws of nations and what it means to lose a war.

The well-documented Japanese military's position was they would surrender if they could disarm themselves, withdraw their troops from China, and try their own war criminals. The peace faction in Japan, including the Emperor and his civilian advisors and even a significant portion of the military, were willing to surrender with one condition, that the Emperor remain the official sovereign of Japan.

Truman and his advisors (all Democratic Party leaders) were aware that if the bombs worked there would be significant civilian casualties. Their reasoning was simple: they did not want to fight the Japanese in what had always been the honorable method. The war might go on until 1948, or the U.S. might suffer a reversal and never win. Or the citizens of the U.S. might have urged their congressmen to negotiate a peace. For the record, two Republican Party generals, Dwight Eisenhower, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, and Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, were against using the atomic weapons on cities as they correctly believed it would be a dishonor to U.S. military forces.

The disposition of colonies was also a prime consideration. If the U.S. had fought a long war with Japan while the British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, and other European nations had a chance to rebuild their commerce, the U.S. might not have been able to dominate the world stage in the 1950s and 1960s.

There is no loophole in the official war crimes laws allowing the purposeful killing of civilians. Even collateral damage, the incidental killing of civilians when fighting enemy soldiers, is supposed to be minimized. If you argue that, for instance, it is okay to kill civilians in order to reduce the deaths of one's own soldiers, there is no line that can be reasonably drawn to protect the innocent. Civilians always provide the economic support for soldiers in war, willingly or unwillingly. Wipe out a work force, and no one is around to build tanks. To subscribe to the theory of total warfare is to say that there is no such thing as a war crime.

Is there a permissible level of killed civilians? Killing civilians accidentally is considered a hazard of war, but at some point should it be clear that accidental is really on purpose. If one civilian dies in an engagement where 100 soldiers are killed, that is not good, but unless the civilian was specifically targeted we tend to not see a war crimes. But where do we see a war crime? A ration of 10 to 100? 50 to 100? 200 to 100? At Hiroshima the ratio was closer to 750 to 100, at Nagasaki even higher. A reasonable person can only conclude that the point was to kill massive numbers of civilians, and the military targets at the city merely provided a pretext. U.S. records support that interpretation.

Truman and crew did not honestly subscribe to the theory that the war crimes laws are ridiculous. They prosecuted and executed a few Germans and a lot of Japanese for war crimes after the war. They turned the Rule of Law into the Gruel of Law: the war crimes of victors would not be war crimes, only losing nations had committed war crimes.

An alternative defense is that only aggressor nations should be subject to war crimes law. This position creates much trouble. It is a not always clear which nation is the aggressor. Often two nations or sets of nations are eager for war, and the incident that sets of the war is almost irrelevant, as in World War I or the War of 1812. But again, you need to ask: is it okay to kill women and children, even of an aggressor nation? And when nations have been at war at intervals for centuries, is the aggressor label awarded based on the latest round, or is there some more complex calculus that should be used?

If aggressor nations are the only ones that must obey the rules of war, the whole exercise in war crimes law is probably pointless. Starting a war is itself a violation of the rules of war (although as usual, there are economic acts of war, like blockading a nation, that might justify calling a war defensive, or a war of survival). Having violated that rule, why follow any of the rules, unless they offer some sort of advantage?

Finally, there are racial arguments. U.S. relations with Japan had a huge racist component from the very beginning. Official discrimination against Japanese was a constant of U.S. domestic policy until after World War II. Destroying (perceived) subhuman lives in order to spare (white) human lives was a significant factor in World War II, but it should be no excuse in a war crimes tribunal.

Conclusion. A fair and impartial person should be able to identify the atomic bombing attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. The excuses given for the war crimes should be rejected as based on racism, nationalism, cowardliness, and a criminal mindset. The war criminals responsible should have been tried and sentenced. The organizations the war criminals led should have been disbanded.

Further, the failure to fairly uphold the war crimes laws subsequently led to contempt for those laws by the political and military leaders of the United States of America and their allies.

Halloween Horrors from American History

When people think of horrors rising from the grave at Halloween, if they think about American history the best they can come up with is usually Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. That just shows how well-built our mental defenses are against true horror.

Perhaps tonight some unlucky people will see the ghost of John Woods. His older brother had been conscripted into the Tennessee militia in the war of 1812. For reasons unknown John, who was just 17, took his brother's place in Andrew Jackson's army in February, 1814. They had been fighting Indians, and none too victoriously. "He made the mistake of arguing with the Officer of the Day outside of the General's tent. Jackson stepped outside and ordered: "Shoot him." Two days later, on March 14th, at 10 A.M. John Woods was shot dead by his fellow soldiers at Jackson's command. The General now believed he was ready to fight the Red Sticks again, with less insubordination from his underlings." [from Andrew Jackson Fights the Red Sticks]

John Woods was hardly the only victim of Andrew Jackson, a slaver who went on to create the Democratic Party and use it to make himself President, but let's make this a variety horror show. There were, of course, the natives. If every murdered American Indian showed up on Halloween, it would be a sight. Practically every major figure in American history up to the Civil War was an Indian killer of some magnitude. George Washington killed Indians, as did Thomas Jefferson, as did hordes of forgotten European colonizers. The rapid accumulation of wealth and establishment of a ruling class in the United States was largely accomplished by the murder of Indians and theft of their lands.

Ghosts of dead slaves, too, could put together quite a Halloween ball. Many died horrible deaths while in chains in Africa or on the ships that brought them across the Atlantic. In America the life expectancy, and living conditions, of slaves working at cotton or tobacco culture was nothing to sing songs to Jesus for the blessings of Christianity about. Again, the same names pop out of our history books, slavers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson not being particularly noted for their cruelty, but rather as the political frontmen for the owners of larger lots of expendable human workforce. Of course, even after the Civil War, the Democratic Party made sure that life for African Americans was halloween everyday in the former slave states.

White people, don't despair. Not all of our ancestors were Indian killers and racists. In fact, most white people who arrived in the colonies before the American Revolution came over as indentured servants, and their ghosts, in their millions, could tell some tales. While indentured slavery was for a period of time, usually 7 years, and many survived and went free, most were worked and starved to death by the end of their term, that being more profitable than turning free a healthy, well fed human being.

I cannot neglect to mention the foreign wars. There are too many ghosts and spooks to mention them all here, even in lumps, so a few must represent all. The Philippines War, an addendum to the Spanish American War, was carried on with the same principles of an Indian extermination campaign. No one knows how many Filipino freedom fighters and civilians died under the cheery tutelage of Theodore Roosevelt and crew, but rough estimates range from a low of about one-half million to a high of two million. The U.S. war to occupy Korea and the Vietnam War are worth an all-saints mention.

If you are looking for glow-in the dark zombies, perhaps you would enjoy the resurrection of the only large bodies of people killed by atomic weapons, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The average American, who deserves to be haunted into an early grave, simply repeats the charming meme, "it saved lives of American soldiers." That the rules of war have always said it is not okay to kill civilians to save your own soldiers seems lost on people. That Science, which should be a beacon of light, was bent to this unholy purpose, makes it all the more criminal. President Harry Truman, the leader of the Democratic Party, made the decision to drop the bomb. The Democratic Party is the only party in history that has dropped atomic weapons on human beings. Had America lost World War II, or had a fair and impartial system of international justice been created, the Democratic Party would have been permanently banned, just like the National Socialist German Workers Party was.

For me, the horror is walking out into a world where a bunch of Democratic Party zombies grope about in continual denial of the reality of what their party has done, and what they have embraced by joining it. How many more people will die violent deaths at Democrats' hands before its reign of terror fades into history?

Madame Butterfly, Nagasaki and Empire

I don't know much about opera, but I have been intending to see if I can add it to the kinds of music I like (Rock, Folk, Classical, Jazz, World Beat ...). The community theater in Point Arena, California has been one of the theaters showing simulcasts from the New York Metropolitan Opera. Saturday I went and watched Madame Butterfly (aka Madama Butterfly).

Madame Butterfly, as with many operas, it is about love and infidelity. The protagonist is a young Japanese girl who has a marriage arranged with an American Navy Lieutenant, some time in the second half of the 19th century. He never intends it to be a real wedding; it is a method for cheap whoring. But Madame Butterfly falls deeply in love with him. He sails away; she remains true, and gives birth to a son he does not know about. She desperately maintains the fantasy that B. F. Pinkerton really loves her. When he returns to Japan three years later he is married to an American woman, and they take the son. Butterfly kills herself at the ripe old age of 18. The audience cries. I liked it. I might see another opera some day.

What struck me was that Giacomo Puccini chose to set his opera in Nagasaki. Madame Butterfly was first performed in 1904. There was no way Puccini could know that Nagasaki would be one of only two cities on earth, so far, to be vaporized with atomic weapons. He did probably know a lot more than Americans do now about how the U.S. Navy forced itself upon Japan. Since his Japanese characters are not at all westernized, and since the Lieutenant's ship is the Abraham Lincoln, once could conclude that the opera is set around 1870. But that is just artistic license, as it is supposed to be based on an actual event of the 1890s. After 1870 Japan westernized very rapidly. They put together a modern economy, education system, army and navy in less than two decades. In the 1890's they won a war with China, which surprised everyone. A few days before the first production of Madame Butterfly, the Russian-Japanese war began, which Japan won in 1905. This frightened European imperialists almost as much as Anarchism and Marxism. Some powerful Americans began wondering if it had been a good idea, forcing foreign trade upon Japan.

You could see Madame Butterfly as an Italian metaphor for the tragedy of Japan embracing American ways. The Italians, Americans, Russians and Japanese would all be allies the task of dismembering Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but the United States saw Japan as a rival, not a partner, after that.

After the opera ended some of my friends were outside chatting. They are all Democrats. They think they agree with me on most political issues. They say they are for the environment, peace, and social justice. I like to remind them of the differences, but not too often, or we could not be friends.

"What a metaphor. It's like Puccini was a prophet who knew the Democratic Party would drop an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Nagasaki."

A couple of groans, but before they can warn the novices, one asks the automatic I-am-a-brain-dead-liberal question: "What do you mean the Democratic Party dropped the bomb on Nagasaki?"

"The Democratic Party ruled the U.S. at the time. It controlled both branches of Congress and the Supreme Court. The final decision to drop atomic weapons on two civilian urban areas was made by the head of the Democratic Party, President Truman."

"Well, it ended the war early. And the Republicans would have done the same."

"So you think that if mass killings of civilians will further your war aims, like giving you an earlier victory, then killing them is not a war crime?"

Silence. Veins bursting. I was hoping for a "Yes," so I could compare Truman to Hitler and Bush, but failing that I went on.

"According to the record, the only advisor to Truman to oppose the use of atomic weapons against civilians was a Republican. Dwight Eisenhower. He believed soldiers should fight soldiers. He was against committing war crimes to achieve strategic objectives."

"That was then. The Democratic Party is different now."

"That must be why President Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan. That's why the Democrats continued to vote funds for the wars after they gained a majority in the House in 2006."

"You can't achieve anything by being in the Green Party!" This, though said by a woman, was said in a tone that spat venom.

"You can make it perfectly clear that you are not a war criminal. That you are not part of a war crimes organization."

"The Democratic Party is not a war crimes organization!" She yelled this loud enough that pretty much everyone within 50 yards could hear it. Most of the original group of Democrats have already backed away from our circle.

"I would say that any organization that repeatedly commits war crimes is a war crimes organization."

"The Democratic Party has not repeatedly committed war crimes!"

"If you judge the Democratic Party impartially, by the standards that were used to judge the Japanese and Nazis after World War II, then Vietnam offers multiple instances of war crimes. If you have the afternoon to spare and are too lazy to read a history book, I can outline other Democratic Party crimes against humanity and war crimes for you."

"It's a different party now!"

"No, it isn't. Its filled with people like you who will rationalize and apologize for any American military adventure, as long as it is led by a President who is a Democrat."

At that point this peace-loving, Bush-hating, female Democrat, said "I love Obama! I will never, ever vote for a Green Party candidate. Never ever." And stomped off to her own personal hell.

But hopefully she will feel better by the next time I see her at a community event. Living in the heart of the Democratic Party Empire, I do try to get along people.