Bernie Sanders: Progressive, Socialist, or just Liberal?

Is Bernie Sanders a really a Socialist or just another Liberal?

I cannot point out too many times that people tend to see specific a word as representing a specific, real object. But we all have had the experience that one word can mean many things, and that specific things may have more than one name. Words of the day: socialist and progressive.

The Democratic Party Presidential debate in New Hampshire on February 4, 2016 provided lessons in both semantics and real politics. It was a long debate. Anyone who listened to it, or who reads the transcript, might reasonably select different points to emphasizing in reporting on it. Not surprisingly, Bernie advocates believe he won the debate, while Hillary advocates believe she won the debate.

I am not concerned with who "won" the debate. I am not registered in any political party, but I certainly have a political agenda. And I have priorities. I put the environment first, international peace and justice second, and American economic & legal justice third. But I have an opinion about just about every detail of politics, society and culture.

To me the debate was an important read on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy. Hillary Clinton is too hawkish for my taste, but of course she is much closer to mainstream sentiments than I am.

Bernie harps on Clinton's vote to attack Iraq (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). But Bernie's rabble rousing speeches always fail to mention his vote to attack Afghanistan (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). When pointed out, he changes the subject, as he did in the debate. When it is pointed out to his supporters, they usually go back to the Clinton Iraq vote.

In the debate there was a second part to the question. Both Hillary and Bernie were asked, by the moderators: what would you do about the U.S. troops currently in Iraq. Hillary gave a clear answer without hesitation: she would leave the troops there, subject to the situation changing. Bernie tried to evade answering, but when pinned down said, or I should say mumbled, that he would leave the troops there.

Bernie is also for fighting ISIS, preferably with other nation's armies. It is a hypocritical position for someone who claims he has been screaming for 50 years about American job losses. Isn't killing ISIS soldiers a paid job? Why should that skilled labor go to foreigners?

Forgive me if I wax sarcastic. It's the "I'm perfect," from Bernie, "He's perfect" from his chorus of followers chanting that has become irritating. But then I'm from California, in fact northern California, where a Bernie Bot seems to be lurking in every smoke-filled room. No, not tobacco.

In short, when pushed to comment, Bernie was just as hawkish as Hillary. Too hawkish for me.

I was surprised and pleased that Hillary finally started poking at Bernie's allegedly perfect Progressive credentials. I think earlier in the campaign she and her advisors assumed she would beat Bernie easily. She did not want to alienate his followers, as she will need their support in November. But his follows drank his kool-aid, not knowing, as he himself remembers, what a bad little boy he has been these past thirty years.

Hillary pointed out that he voted to deregulate derivatives. Bernie did not deny it, he just went on to change the subject. Bernie Bots would be all over Hillary if she did something like that. They would claim it is proof that she is just a pawn for Goldman Sachs. But in all the commentary I've read today (admittedly just a fraction of what there is), I have seen no Bernie Bot criticizing Bernie for that vote. Maybe Bernie Bots don't know what a financial derivative is.

The Democratic Party is no home for Socialists. I would say the Democratic Party is socialist-influenced. Sanders bought the socialist line in college (so did I). Now, in his dotage, apparently doing something about it is on his bucket list. Great. Do something about it, if you can. I personally favor mixed systems, though I would probably argue about what specifically should be socialized and what should be left to free markets. Also I favor worker ownership of business, not the centralized government bureaucratic ownership of business that Sanders favors. Though I might make an exception in some cases, like localities owning their own utility companies.

So hurray for Bernie, but I've had enough of old white socialist male domination in my lifetime (most of my friends were fellow leftist activists). I'd like to try old white female liberal domination for 4 years, especially since the alternative is Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I have watched a lot of bullying done by Bernie supporters both on the Internet and in my local area. At the comments section of the New York Times, for instance, you would think 98% of the Democratic Party voters favor Bernie. I've found that if I even hint to many voters around here that Hillary might be the better candidate, suddenly they want to talk. The rabidness of the Bernie Bullies is not something they can turn off. Most people need that personality defect to maintain a leftist stance in America. But bullying does not a Democracy make.

From Kunduz to Paris, with Love

No one wants to be an innocent victim of human violence. The recent attacks in Paris, Mali, Lebanon and elsewhere show that if nothing else is prospering in the world, hate is. But, if you can gain the perspective, these all represent small scale violence by weak players in the world's political and religious arena.

I just received a reminder from Doctors Without Borders about the tragedy at Kunduz. You may recall that Kunduz is a city of about 300,000 people in Afghanistan to the northeast of Kabul, not very far from the Tajikistan border. The Taliban briefly occupied the city in September. The "central" government took it back fifteen days later in October, with help from American troops and warplanes.

The hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders was struck by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, an awesome weapon of war and successor to the AC-47 used to mass murder peasants during the Vietnam War.

Hospitals, as long as they function as hospitals, are never fair targets in war, the same as trucks and tents marked with Red Cross identification. For details on why the Kunduz massacre was a war crime, see Protection of Medical Services Under International Law.

This is not the sort of incident that happens by accident, nor do the circumstances around the massacre look accidental in any way. This is not a case of stray bullets from the AC-130 missing a legitimate target and then hitting some doctors, nurses, and patients. The Hospital Was the Target.

And that is the kind of thing that is controlled from the White House Situation Room. Whether President Barack Obama was actually in the situation room and made the call will probably become publicly available in about 60 years.

I have no sympathy for anyone who kills civilians, whether Presidents of the United States (or other nations) or freelance Islamists or any other political/social/religious group. So I have sympathy with the victims in Paris, and no sympathy for the perps, including the chain of command above them, right up to the Caliph.

The difference I have with most Americans [Trigger alert: prepare to be shocked by an opinion] is that I don't think the victims of American President Barack Obama (and the many war criminal President predecessors) are in any essential way different than the victims of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Osama Bin Laden, or for that matter Pol Pot, Trotsky, General Franco or anyone else. The government of the United States was established by violence; almost all governments are. It does not matter to me whether violence is used to establish a republic or an Islamic State, it is wrong because it is violence, and particularly wrong when it is violence against civilians.

In particular, I am not a fan of the French government. To me the French monarchs starting with Charlemagne, Napoleon, the French imperialists who conquered Vietnam and other colonies, Philippe Petain, and the leaders who recently bombed Raqqa are just slight variations on the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi theme.

The American people have no learning curve. They are not told the facts, and if a few people learn a few facts, they are swiftly swept aside by a torrent of daily woes. We could have learned a lot from the Somalia disaster, but most Americans don't even know there was a Somalia disaster, much less how American foreign policy and military stupidity drove that nation to disaster, step by step. Somalians can now choose between a corrupt and inept U.S. puppet government and an al-Qaeda aligned opposition.

Which is not much different than choosing between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There was a time when I thought the people of Mendocino County, California, would find their way out of that trap, but with the Bernie Sanders phenomena, I see that too much marijuana and too-little fact checking, and thinking things through, makes escape impossible. Bernie has vowed to destroy the Islamic State. And how does that differ from every other power-hungry American politician?

It can be tempting to say that the victims in Paris were is some sense fair targets because they allowed their government to bomb Syria in the preceding weeks. This is the type of argument used by the British Empire and the American Empire during World War II to justify carpet bombing Japanese and German civilians during World War II. This argument leads to the excusing (by the perpetrators, anyway) of all killings of civilians.

Every nation should police its own government to prevent war crimes. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and all their gang should be tried for war crimes and, instead of being hung by their necks like the Nuremburg criminals, spend the rest of their lives in prison. To some extent the American people are to blame for allowing the crimes. But our lack of power to change the system is really no different than the situation of those living under the Islamic State. Hopefully the governments of Syria and Iraq will be able to defeat the Islamic State, but will respect the lives of civilians. And spare the lives of any soldiers that surrender, as per international law of prisoners of war.

An Eye for An Eye: Beheading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A lot of history, as well as the dilemmas of the current world, can be summed up as part of a conflict within the Christian tradition. The same conflict occurs in other religions, and for atheists; I am choosing the Christian wording because it is as good as any, and most Americans have heard it:

Bible, Leviticus 24:19-20: "As he hath done, so shall it be done to him: Eye for eye, tooth for tooth." That is the supposed word of a god, speaking to Moses.

Bible, Mathew 5:38-39: "Ye have heard it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you: That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is supposed to be quoting Jesus Christ himself, alleged only son of the one-and-done God.

Well, life is about learning, but when you are dead all your personal learning goes to waste. When I was around twelve my mother was mad at me after mass at Christ the King Church in Jacksonville, Florida. I actually don't remember what I did or said; I may have done something, like missing a beat during some part of the mass. Probably I answered some question of hers in a manner she called "talking back." In any case she slapped me hard on my cheek. It happened to be my left cheek, but in any case I turned the other cheek to her.

She went totally ballistic. Other churchgoers had to restrain her. I was lucky they were there, because my mother had been the only woman marine to actual kill a Japanese soldier in hand-to-hand combat in World War II. Any way, she calmed down, got me, my sister, and my brother (who thought this was terribly funny) into the family car, and drove us home. She did not report the incident to my father, as far as I know, or I would have gotten a second, more measured but more painful beating. My father had been in Marine Corps intelligence [unofficially still was, which is why he was not at Church that Sunday morning with us: he was at his "civilian" job at Sea Land, providing logistical support for the attempt to "recover" Cuba], and knew how to inflict severe pain on people without leaving marks. As he proved many times in domestic life.

So I am basically a turn the other cheek guy, and became a draft dodger and peace protestor during the War in Vietnam, but I can understand anger. I can understand the desire for justice.

The real world is a complicated place. It should not be surprising that after about 3 centuries of post-Jesus pacifism, when the Christian cult had grown large and become the only legal religion within its old enemy, the Roman Empire, turning the cheek began to lose ground. With everyone now a Christian, of course that meant that the criminals were Christians, and businessmen, and power-hungry men. Dial forward to, say 1000 A.D., and Christian armies were fighting Christian armies on a nearly-continuous basis.

There is a split-down-the middle approach that works well in many situations: self defense. When I was older and bigger, age 17, finally when my mother went to slap me I just grabbed her wrist and pushed it back down. Strangely, that was the end of her beating up on me, my older brother (who went on to become a Marine Corps Colonel) and (I believe) my younger sister, though Mother found other ways to try to control us.

Unfortunately often people are unable to defend themselves, even when they try. Or the losses are tragic, as with the Philippines unsuccessful attempt to defend itself against U.S. aggression, or the Vietnamese ultimately successful defensive tragedy, or innumerable other such wars within even just the memories of those currently living. Self-defense requires resources on par with those used by aggressors.

Regarding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the junior member of the Boston Marathon bombers, I think the ethics of the situation are clear, but complex. This was not an ordinary crime, but was part of the War Against Fundamentalist Islamic Groups Not Aligned With the U.S. [because the nation of Saudi Arabia is very fundamentalist, but is aligned with the U.S., so we don't fight them. And for that matter the government of Syria is not fundamentalist, but it is not aligned with the U.S., so there is no good description, except maybe the Pentagon's War to Justify Its Budget].

Prisoners of War (POWs) are to be treated humanely under International Law. They can be held until the war is over, then they must be released. This can be difficult for soldiers in the heat of battle. One moment a guy is trying to kill you, the next he is a POW with human rights. It is hard to remember the rule is reciprocal: you were trying to kill him, if you were captured you'd be the POW with human rights, that hopefully he would honor.

So is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a POW? I would argue yes. So he should be held in prison until the war is over, which will likely be never.

But International Law also says that militaries purposefully or negligently killing civilians is a war crime (or a crime against humanity if in a non-war context). And Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother did not pick a military target. They purposefully chose a civilian target.

Which is back to eye-for-eye. The United States has never hung any of its own soldiers, much less our Commander in Chief, for killing civilians. And we have killed a lot of them, from American Indian tribes (which admittedly was before modern War Crimes treaties were signed) to Japanese to Vietnamese to Iraqis and Somalis and now Syrians.

Under eye-for-eye, it's okay to behead Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Under war crimes law, it is okay to behead Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Under U.S. law, probably another method of execution would be used.

But any form of execution would create another martyr for the crazy-ass interpretation of Islam. It won't do anything to curb the similarly crazy-ass interpretations of Judaism and Christianity.

It won't do any good at all. The most pragmatic thing to do is to get Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to become a peace worker. Let him tour around telling high school students not to be lured into violent cults, like the U. S. Marine Corps or I.S.I.S. Let him tell them to turn the other cheek whenever possible, and to not make self-defense into an excuse for aggression, as so many people are doing today.

Should the U.S. Join the ICC?

The people of the United States of America should force their government to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC is charged with prosecuting people who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is meant to be a global organization, so that no one in the world can get away with these crimes. Currently 123 nations are members.

The United States of America (USA) is not a member. The USA helped plan for the ICC and participated in writing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. But then the U.S. representative voted against the U.N. sponsored convention in 1998. Our government refused to ratify the statute or participate in the ICC. [Strangely, the U.S. had signed the statute after voting against the actual wording].

Why? Because equality before the law is a fine concept when used to hang Nazi or Japanese leaders or African dictators. But the U.S. Congress and Presidents, political parties and generals don't want the laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity applied to them.

This is true even though the statute only allows for prosecution of crimes committed after the treaty came into effect (after a sufficient number of nations ratified it) on July 1, 2002. The vast sweep of American history, and its vast array of war criminals, living and dead, are safe from prosecution for crimes committed before that date.

It is possible that even if the U.S. (and other renegade nations like Russia, China, and India) were to join the ICC, our leaders would continue to commit crimes. The U.S. could also refuse to accept the judgment of the court after a crime is committed. But it seems likely that the crime rate would go down if criminal masterminds thought there was any possibility that they would be prosecuted.

The only way the U.S. will join the ICC is if there is sufficient pressure from below. Most of the USA's ruling elite have committed or condoned war crimes. They are still bent on committing war crimes and crimes against humanity if that should serve their economic or political purposes.

Pressure from below has been scant because most Americans think all our national actions are justified in some way. If you remind them of what was considered a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials of German leaders in 1945 (or of the Japanese in the Far East Tribunal), they have no problem with it. Try then reminding them of American historic actions that clearly would be considered war crimes under the Nuremberg rules. Watch them weasel out reasons (they are repeating from USA propaganda mills) why the USA is excused in each and every case.

It is hard to say which political party is worse, the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Republican rhetoric tends to dismiss the ICC and any suggestion that Republicans have ever committed war crimes as internationalist communist U.N. conspiracy theory. Many Democrats give lip service to the ideal of peace, and won't admit that the three worst American war criminals of the 20th century were Democratic Party leaders: Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.

A little-known aspect (in the USA) of the Nuremberg rules is how a political party is designated as a war-crimes organization. The court's guideline was that if one of the leaders was convicted of a major war crime (notably invading another nation), then the entire party was a war crimes organization and was to be outlawed. Thus the Nazi Party was outlawed in Germany after World War II. [See also: War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9]

That is the only precedent on the subject. In other words, if it is proven that Lyndon Johnson invaded Vietnam, or Truman ordered unrestricted bombings of cities, or even the invasion of Panama by George H. W. Bush, then their political parties should be banned. According to the one good precedent. Note that the USA set up the Nuremberg trials and made the rules.

The ICC does not seem to be strictly following the precedent of Nuremberg. But since it is not under the absolute control of U.S. war criminals and their organization, there is always the possibility that the current rules could be made more strict.

Each and every citizen of the USA (and the world) should ask: do I understand what actions constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity? Understanding that, should all war criminals be brought to justice, including those of powerful nations like the USA?

Be sure to ask every politician you meet if they support the USA joining the ICC. If one says no, for whatever reason, know you are dealing with a criminal.

Be aware that by registering as a voter in the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, you have joined a war crimes organization and are condoning war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Caitlin Hayden Delivers Obama's Declaration of War on Syria

Caitlin Hayden, speaking for the National Security Council (NSC) announced yesterday President Barack Obama is requesting $500 million from Congress to fund a war against Syria. [See White House Caitlin Hayden press release, June 26, 2014]

This amounts to requesting a declaration of war, and if acted upon would constitute a war crime under international law.

Americans have trouble understanding how criminal their international actions are. Imagine that nations are actually equal under international law. Now imagine the Syrian government openly giving $500 million in weapons to a U.S. opposition group to overthrow the U.S. government. Any U.S. President would feel justified in declaring war on Syria in that circumstance.

Giving military aid to groups trying to overthrow their government is an act of war. Sure, it is an act of war the U.S. has gotten away many times since 1776. We act as if we are above the rules of international law and common decency.

Barack Obama has always been a slick lawyer-politician. Note he should ask the Congress to declare war on Syria, as the U.S. Constitution requires. Instead he is raping Syria through the backdoor. [But Congress declaring war, if Syria has not invaded the U.S., would still be a war crime.]

It will take time for the new "Counter-Terrorism Partnerships Fund," of $1.5 billion (of which $500 million is designated to be used against Syria) to become law. It is part of the Administration's Fiscal 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations budget. Congress could reject it, but with almost every Congressional district containing either a military base or major military contractor, the chances are Congress will pass it. A few congress people with anti-war constituencies will preserve their electoral chances by voting against the measure, while going along and benefitting from the system.

To get a successful opposition in Congress would require massive, nationwide popular opposition to the legislation. To get that Americans would have to care that they are a war criminal nation led by war crimes parties, a war crimes government, and a war crimes military-industrial establishment.

Note that this illegal attack on the government of the sovereign state of Syria is not about dictatorships or democracy. The current leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, was recently re-elected. Close by we have the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, which has a far worse human rights record than Syria. Women have no rights in Saudi Arabia; they do in Syria. Syria has religious freedom; Saudi Arabia does not. In terms of crushing any opposition, Saudi Arabia is worse than Syria.

So why is the U.S. government (it was U.S. policy long before Barack Obama lied his way into the Presidency) attacking Syria instead of Saudi Arabia? Because Saudi Arabia is a pro-U.S. woman-oppressing radical Islamic dictatorship.

Caitlin Hayden, war crimes spokesperson for Barack Obama

Barack Obama, like President George W. Bush and many others before him, is a war criminal. I would love to put him on trial and prove it. But that is not going to happen. I'm much more likely to be put on trial, or jailed or murdered without trial for telling the truth, than he is for his war crimes.

As to my friends in the Democratic Party and Republican Party, I just want to remind you that you, too, are war criminals. Your fate should be the fate of the Nuremberg Trials defendants and the members of their organizations [See denazification]. Check out the Nuremberg principles if you are not sure if you are a war criminal, or member of an organization of war criminals, or the specifics of what constitutes a war crime.

Will anyone run for Peace in 2016?

How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
—Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind

When I was a child (in the 1960s) and realized the world was full of lies and liars, I became aware of the vast distance between the rules for goodness I was taught and what was actually going on in the world. The U.S. War against the people of Vietnam was the most glaring example, but it took me considerable time to figure that out.

Even as late as 10th grade (1969) I was conflicted as to whether the U.S. was in the right. I had heard people were against the war, but in my Marine Corps, Roman Catholic, Southern Democrat family and society, it was communists who had started the war. American soldiers were defending the freedom loving people of South Vietnam. You might believe that if you believe Jesus appointed the Bishop of Rome to be Pope and that white people are all that is good in the world. We believed American peace protesters were a bunch of communists.

Here I am, alive and bitching 50 years later. The massive genocide that was the Vietnam War has been replaced by the Bush/Obama war on terror. Some think that it is a war on radical Islam, but a quick check reveals that ultra-conservative Islam is okay if it is pro-U.S. No form of anti-U.S. Islam is okay, not even liberal or moderate. You don't have to be a terrorist. All you have to do is point out the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. has committed and President Obama will put you on his kill without a trial list. You don't have to plan an attack in America or on a U.S.-allied government or local thug; all you need to commit is thought crime.

In fact, a lot of the deaths reported as victories over terrorism are what could be called "false positives." The CIA and Special Murdering Forces go out and ask around Yemen and Somalia and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Libya and Mali and the Philippines, "hey, can you finger any Al-Qaeda operatives around here?" Money is held out. Mohommed is having a feud with Muhammed, it is relatively new, just 3 generations old, so he says "sure, that Muhammed guy is the local Al-Qaeda leader, I overheard him talking to Osama on his cell phone."

The Special Forces report this "intelligence" up the chain of command until Barack Obama says "kill that MF Muhammed." The Predator drones go out and blow up his little village, killing women and children, but not killing everyone. It is a pretty good bet the young men who survive will be looking for an Internet connection to have a meet up with Al-Qaeda.

When you start looking at where Al-Qaeda is now compared to 2001, you will see they are beginning to look like the old British Empire. Expanding faster than a fast food chain backed by Goldman Sachs.

But Obama does not care about killing innocents. Signing off on assassinations makes him feel like God and keeps the Republicans and the National Security people off his back. All those Democrats in Congress with military bases and factories in their districts love the war too. What does it matter if a few Somali women get caught in the cross fire, when it means a Senator can pretend she is keeping jobs in her state?

So what we (peace loving people) need is a Congress and a President that will close down the CIA and Special Forces hit squads, turn Predators into solar arrays, and transfer funds from the Pentagon and Homeland Security to making life better for citizens. Maybe even pay some war reparations.

Where will our candidates come from? In 2006 the nation elected a Democratic Party dominated Congress, based largely on a promise of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That Congress evolved into what we have today. I can only conclude they were (and are) a bunch of lying politicians. They'd tell you chocolate is vanilla if they thought it would get your vote. (And sadly, most good party members would report "tastes like vanilla!")

So we would hope for independent or third-party peace candidates. But we know how that goes. The press mocks or ignores them. The donors don't donate. And the voters, well, I don't think the majority of voters are anti-war. They won't be anti-war until their own cousins are picked off by Predators. Which probably won't be long, but we are talking here about the 2016 elections.

For President we can expect Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Among the fire-breathing, imperialist, war mongering, lies if her lips are moving candidates, she would be my preference. Just as Barack Obama proved a sorta black man could be a President just like any white liar, Hillary would prove a woman can be President. Not a President I would like, but something lying, greedy, hypocritical young females can aspire to.

The Green Party and the Libertarian Party will each nominate someone as usual. Almost certainly it will be someone with no experience in political office. Sorry, but that is not going to win an election, or even put a dent in the American consciousness.

It gets grim beyond that. Rand Paul might be anti-war, but I don't trust him. Dennis Kucinich probably would not run as an independent; he feels safer in a war-crimes organization like the Democratic Party than out of it. Same for former President Jimmy Carter. The only real, heavy-weight peace candidate of my life-time, George McGovern, died in 2012.

But somewhere out there maybe there is a Representative or big-city Mayor or Governor who would make a credible peace candidate. I'll let you know if I hear of one. But my main hope is that the world's investors will realize the U.S. government is bankrupt and stop lending it money. Then we might finally see some serious reduction in war spending.

Yasukuni Shrine and Arlington National Cemetery

Chinese nationalists get upset when Japanese government figures visit the shrine to Japan's war dead at Yasukuni. China got into a war with Japan over control of Korea in 1894. To everyone else's surprise, Japan won that war. This led to increasing predation on China by other imperialist powers, cumulating in the Chinese trying to defend themselves in what we in the West call the Boxer Rebellion. Japan, the U.S., and a number of other Western powers invaded and established that China was no longer a sovereign nation, despite diplomatic niceties to the contrary.

Japan did establish an independent state in Manchuria (aka Manchukuo), the alternative being Russian dominance there. China descended into bickering regions ruled by warlords. Asserting the Japanese equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, in the 1930's Japan intervened in China proper. The Japanese called it a policing action to restore order to China; the Chinese called it a war of aggression.

By any reasonable measure, the Japanese were invaders and committed war crimes. They should have let the Chinese muddle through their own mess. The Chinese tend to forget their own long history of military aggression (which is why China is the size it is today) and grow outraged when they think of the Japanese invasion. Yasukuni has become a symbol of Japanese militarism for the Chinese.

But the Japanese (with the exception of a few ultra-right wing nut jobs) say they are just honoring their ancestors. They are not celebrating the age of Japanese imperialism.

Meanwhile, no one seems to get upset about the honoring of America's war dead at the Arlington National Cemetery. Even though more than a few war criminals are buried there, including Americans who fought against various Asian nations including China, the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam.

Not every soldier is a war criminal. Some are lucky enough to live in times of peace. Others are unlucky enough to be ordered to commit war crimes. But in addition to committing war crimes under orders of Class A war criminals (typically political leaders), some soldiers commit war crimes despite explicit orders against doing so. Such individual war crimes typically are killing civilians and killing prisoners of war. The traditional don't ask, don't tell policy about these extra-legal killings means almost anyone buried at Arlington could be a war criminal.

In the probably-not-a-war-criminal category at Arlington, but worth discussion in the Japan v. China context, we have Claire Lee Chennault. Retired U.S. Air Force Captain Chennault arrived in China in 1937 and began working for the war lord Chiang Kai-shek as chief air force advisor. In 1941 President Roosevelt provided Chennault and Chiang with fighter planes and former U.S. Air Force personnel to fight the Japanese in China. They were flying in China at least as early as November 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, thus showing the U.S. was engaged in an undeclared war. One might ask the Communist Chinese: is Chennault a scoundrel for aiding Chiang Kai-shek, or a hero for fighting the Japanese? In either case, his body lies in grave 873-3-4, Section 2.

From the U.S. war on China aka the Boxer Rebellion, or Yihetuan Movement, we have Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward, who also served in the Philippine-American War. He is in grave 699-A-B, Section 1. Given the number of soldiers the U.S. sent to attack the Chinese, quite a number of them are likely to be buried at Arlington.

As to the atrocities of the Philippines, several soldiers directly connected to them are buried at Arlington (and given the genocidal nature of the conflict, probably most U.S. soldiers who served there were complicit or participants in war crimes). We have the leader, General Arthur MacArthur himself, in grave 856-A, Section 2. Colonel William Henry Bisbee, who was told not to report his destruction of civilians to his superiors, lies in grave 1872, Section 3. Edwin Glenn, convicted by a courts martial of torturing civilians, suspended from duty for one month, and fined $50, lies in 3103-ES. For more on war crimes by the U.S. in the Philippines see Honor in the Dust.

Harry Truman, who by ordering the atomic bombing of Japan committed the most famous war crime in history, is not burried at Arlington, but likely research would put some of the men who fire bombed Japanese cities in graves there.

Skipping the U.S. war against Korea, which was not without its issues, we have the honoring of the Vietnam War criminals. Among those buried at Arlington is General Creighton Abrams, who supervised the slaughter (and who was a proponent for the war, not someone just carrying out orders), in grave S-33, Section 21.

A thorough search could probably find thousands of soldiers buried at Arlington who gave offense to some nation.

I would argue that the problem is not Americans honoring our war dead, but our failure to hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability. The dead can do no further wrong to anyone, but the living can. Both Japanese and American war criminals shared the belief that what they were doing was right and necessary. We should be clear they were wrong.

But you should not ask people not to visit the graves of their ancestors. The Chinese do it, and the Chinese are not exactly a nation of innocents.

Every responsible person should work to tone down nationalist sentiments that could lead to military conflict. Don't forget the past. Don't dismantle Yasukuni or close Arlington. But work for peace. Because what the Chinese are really complaining about is a past breach of their peace and sovereignty. All nations should pledge to respect each other's sovereignty. All nations should maintain a knowledge of their past crimes to help them stay on a peaceful path.

Agree? Disagree? Comment on this post.

Pearl Harbor, the Cadiz Raid, and War Crimes

Americans are more likely to know the fictional histories of Middle Earth or of Westeros than actual world history. Most, however, have at least a vague idea of the Battle of Pearl Harbor, memorialized every December 7. So too it is hard to miss the story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. But few know of the Raid on Cadiz. When it comes to issues of war and war crimes, you should consider Cadiz along with these other historic events.

The Cadiz Raid of 1587 was part of the struggle between Spain and England (which was partly a religious struggle between the reformed Christian churches and the Roman Catholic Church, which is not important to the context of this essay). Sir Francis Drake can be fairly said to have been a pirate operating under license from Queen Elizabeth I. The Spanish Armada was assembling in a number of ports, preparatory to the invasion of England, following the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots in February 1587, which made a Roman Catholic (and pro-Spain) succession to Elizabeth unlikely. Leading a fleet of only four vessels, Drake surprised the Spanish fleet at Cadiz and destroyed 37 ships in April 1587.

The Raid on Cadiz, in both English and American history, is a glorious moment. The following year Drake and the English navy and a fortuitous storm repelled the Spanish Armada, saving England from the Spanish Inquisition.

But what if you stop and think about whether the Cadiz Raid was right or wrong, or a war crime?

Is building an army or navy the same as actually waging a war of aggression? What if the intent is to wage war? What if the intent is to bully, so obtain some advantage without actually waging the war?

Would the Cadiz raid be legal because the English knew Spain was planning a war? Or was it illegal since negotiations were taking place that might have averted war?

[300 pages of legal and ethical discussion later...] Let's look at some other historical events using our Cadiz decision [(1) it was an act of aggression and war crime, or (2) it was an act of defense, and not a war crime] as a legal precedent.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. First, you need to know some important facts that are not in most U.S. history books, where Pearl Harbor is characterized as a "surprise" attack. The U.S. and Japan were already fighting in China, with the U.S. air force thinly disguised as a volunteer unit under the dictator Chiang Kai-shek. In addition, the U.S. commander in the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur, had been given permission to attack the Japanese, and a large U.S. invasion fleet was steaming towards the Philippines. The U.S. had broken the Japanese cryptographic codes. The declaration of war by Japan, simultaneous with the attack, was no surprise to Cordell Hull or President Franklin Roosevelt. Though it seemed horrific, the actual attack did relatively little damage to the U.S. fleet. The U.S. was in a massive naval construction program, and had over 10 times the industrial capacity of Japan. The good new battle ships at Pearl Harbor had mysteriously sailed out to sea, well away from the battle. The Japanese sank mainly easily replaceable World War I relics.

So, back to your Cadiz choice. Maybe Pearl Harbor was Japan's Cadiz Raid. The Japanese government knew that its plan to drive the White Race out of their Asian colonies was about to lead the U.S., with its astonishing industrial capacity, to initiate a war allowing the U.S. to fulfill its dream of ruling China and Japan (and maybe take Indochina from the French, too). Pearl Harbor was defense. If you believe Francis Drake should be treated as a hero for his Cadiz raid, then you should treat the Japanese fleet as heroes too.

But what the hey, Cadiz was a long time ago, and Drake was a Brit, not an American, so maybe to preserve the "day of infamy" status of Pearl Harbor you want to go with Cadiz was an act of aggression and a war crime, as you already believe Pearl Harbor was. Then if one nation is planning to attack another nation, even a weaker nation sure to lose a war, the small nation has no right to a pre-emptive strike. They have to wait until the big bully starts the war before they can defend themselves. Like in the recent Iraq war: if Saddam Hussein had shot first, he would be a war criminal. Even though his fight with the U.S. was purely defensive, somehow he was still the war criminal.

American Presidents and most citizens actually prefer to toss out logic. America is always right! If we initiate an attack, we are right! If we are attacked and retaliate, we are right! If we kill civilians in ways that are clearly war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, we play the Americans get out of war crimes free card. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pontificating against aerial bombardments of cities, and calling those actions war crimes, when the U.S. was not yet in World War II, did not mean his later ordering the obliteration of Japanese and German cities was a war crime.

Apparently international law is not really something peacefully agreed upon. As a man who knew something about killing people who disagreed with him once remarked, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." One nation's hero is another nation's pirate. As long as America has chumps stupid enough to buy our bonds, we can keep our guns and our national debt and our freedom from prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Massacre in Mogadishu: July 12, 1993

When the rapacious European empires divided (or re-divided) Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, the British empire grabbed Somalia proper and the Italian empire grabbed Somaliland (north Somalia) to add to its holdings in Eritrea and later Ethiopia.

Independence came in 1960, and of course Somalia became ensnared in the Cold War maneuvers of the American empire and the Russian (Soviet) empire. In a military coup Mohamed Siad Barre set up a socialist government in 1969. The American empire stirred up a rebellion against Barre as the old Russian empire collapsed. Barre went into exile in 1991.

Barre was a member of the Marehan Darod clan, and relied heavily on the clan for support towards the end of his reign despite his Marxist-Leninist ideology. Somalia divided up into areas controlled by clans, often headed by warlords. The second-most powerful clan in Somalia were the Habr Gidr, who led the rebellion against Barre. They were led by General Mohamed Farrah Aidid who had earlier served in Barre's cabinet and who had received military training in the Soviet Union.

The U.S. and its allies thought that the Somalia should become another U.S. franchise, complete with free-market capitalism. General Aidid was not interested in being a U.S. puppet, and the Darod clan and other clans were not interested in subordinating themselves to Aidid, and the country was already shot to hell from the rebellion against Barre.

To enforce U.S. rule President Bill Clinton sent in the stormtroopers. Under the fig leaf of the United Nations, forces attacked Aidid and the Habr Gidr. The clan had the audacity to fight back, with some success. Clinton also sent in a peace negotiator, Jonathan Howe, a former admiral who, like Clinton and all U.S. Presidents, believed in negotiations backed by plenty of firepower.

Responding the the peace offer from Howe, the Habr Gidr decided to call a meeting to talk it over. They would meet on July 12, 2013 at the house of Abdi Hassan Awale in Mogadishu. Almost every important civilian in the clan attended, along with militia leaders. This included businessmen, lawyers and other college educated men, religious leaders, traditional elders and even the clan's best-known poet. Many supported the peace initiative, or were ready to abandon General Aidid.

We'll never know the outcome of the meeting. Learning that the leadership of the clan would meet in one place, the U.S. security apparatus decided to go for decapitation. Eventually Bill Clinton and Admiral Howe signed off on the plan.

TOW anti-tank missiles slammed into the house. Sixteen missiles in all blew up, delivered from helicopters. Then Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters poured machine-gun fire on the survivors. Casualty estimates vary, but mostly likely 73 died and another 175 were wounded. The casualties were mostly civilians, and mostly adult men, but included women and children.

If Americans had not done it, the act would be labeled a war crime. In any case it was incredibly stupid, even from the point of view of furthering U.S. imperial dominance of the globe. The entire Habr Gidr clan rallied around Aidid, and even rival clans were shocked. Who could trust a nation that would do such a thing?

So when stormtroopers went to grab two Aidid senior officials (or Somali government officials, if you can look at it that way) on October 3, 1993, it is really not that surprising that half the city of Mogadishu rose up to fight the Americans. That battle (in which tactics used by Afghanistan veterans to fight the Russians were used by the Somalis ...) is generally known as Black Hawk Down.

Neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush, nor Barack Obama has shown any real learning curve. With Afghanistan winding down (and moving towards a restoration of the Taliban, or of another warlord regime), Africa is an increasing American focus, with Somalia still a center of attention. Every nation in Africa has or is scheduled to soon have an American military presence.

The tactical change is the U.S. is now paying Africans to fight Africans. U.S. troops are still so universally hated in Somalia that they are very rarely used, and only for brief raids. Instead Obama pays a variety of African nations to try to put chains on the people in Somalia.

Note that it has nothing to do with brutality, or the usual propaganda about women (in which we hate the Taliban but love the Saudis, even though they treat women exactly the same.) Obama & crew have no problem with brutality as long as the leader practicing it is pro-American. History has shown the U.S. corporate security state will not put up with the most kindly of governments, if they are not pro-American.

Look at our ally Kenya. It has troops in Somalia, trying to prop up the latest in a series of U.S.-appointed puppet governments. Meanwhile Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. President Obama, ever polishing his image while seething with inner corrosion, has refused to meet with Kenyatta in public, but has no problems with training and funding the Kenyan military.

My prediction: more of the same. Hillary Clinton may not have joined Bill Clinton in ordering the Mogadishu Massacre (though she might have whispered in his ear), but she's been around the imperialist block plenty of times, including during her 4 years as Secretary of State. Since most Republican voters always support American war crimes, and since most Democratic Party voters support war crimes if committed by a Democratic President and Congress, you can bet who the imperialist security czars will be backing in 2016.

The only thing that will stop the madness is the national debt, and only if interest rates rise enough. Strangely a strong economy could sink the entire ship, since interest payments would increase faster than tax revenues, leading to a death spiral. Only then will the troops come home and leave the various peoples of the world to sort out their own societies without the threat of U.S. military intervention.

[Much thanks to Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, particularly pages 71-74 and 94-95]

Bombing Syria, War Crimes, and Marijuana Priorities

Politics is first of all about lying, followed by deceit, then corruption, with the public good seldom coming in better than fourth in the list of politicians' priorities.

Two seemingly unconnected events happened this week. The Obama administration (but not Obama himself) announced it would issue instructions to federal officers and prosecutors that set new priorities for the federal enforcement of marijuana laws. This is largely the result of 21 states (if you include the city of D.C.) having legalized medical marijuana, with two, Washington State and Colorado having also legalized recreational marijuana.

It took Barack Obama only six years to figure this out. The preponderance of voters are now for marijuana legalization, and the Democratic Party has been taking a lot of heat on the issue for years. The new priorities for busting people are: when the weed crosses state lines; when it is sold or given to minors; when the proceeds are used to fund other criminal enterprises; when the entrepreneurs have not made donations to the Democratic Party. In theory at least medical marijuana gets a pass in the states where it has been legalized, as does recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington State.

Then there is Syria. Some group of people there (the lone gunman theory not being bought by anyone in this case) used some type of nerve gas agent on a sufficient scale to kill hundreds of people, who are usually described as civilians. It is generally agreed this happened to a neighborhood of Damascus that is pro-Rebel and anti-President Bashar al-Assad. But Bashar denies giving the order, and a U.N. investigation team has not formed conclusions yet.

Nevertheless, former law professor, now President Barack Obama wants to bomb Syria. It won't be to help the rebels, supposedly, especially since the rebels are now led by Sunni Islamic fundamentalists. It's just a sort of international spanking, grounding (economic embargoes) having not done the trick, so far. If Syrians just go back to killing each other with small arms, artillery and the occasional beheading, Obama will be alright with that.

War crimes are a funny (odd, legally peculiar) thing. War itself is a war crime, since all wars have to be started, and starting a war is a war crime. Once a war is started there are a set of rules both sides are supposed to adhere to. If the war has a winner, the winner usually prosecutes the losing side for war crimes. Winners usually don't prosecute themselves for war crimes, though in a few cases low-level soldiers or officers have been prosecuted.

Obama can't easily try Bashar for war crimes, not without a successful invasion of Syria. But there are all sorts of war criminals he could prosecute. He has simply not chosen to make that a priority for the Justice Department.

There are the Vietnam era war criminals, many of whom are still alive. They started a war with North Vietnam, which was a war crime. They killed vast quantities of civilians both in South and North Vietnam, which was a war crime. They used chemical warfare in the form of napalm and Agent Orange, which was a war crime. They also invaded Laos and Cambodia, also war crimes. They supervised the South Vietnamese murdering civilians and POWs, which was a war crime. These war criminals would be easy to arrest and not too hard to prosecute. But it isn't a priority.

Among the other war criminals milling around Washington, D.C. and the various united States are those who initiated wars on Grenada, the states formerly known as Yugoslavia, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Libya. I probably left out a few.

Perhaps this illustration of the importance of prioritization is a mere coincidence. After all, Obama did not time the nerve gas incident, unless it was the work of the CIA. You may not realize it, but for those who plan ahead, like politicians and their stockholders, this is the gearing up time for the 2014 elections. One-third of the U.S. Senate seats will be up for grabs, as well as the entire House of Representatives. While incumbents almost always win, you can never be sure. Fundraising is in full swing and potential opponents are calculating their odds. Primaries are only a few months away.

Here in Mendocino County, where Republicans are distinguished mainly by their having enough money to smoke more than their fair share of the dope, there will be a backlash against both of Barack Obama's policies. Only the most loyal of Obamacrats want him to bomb Syria. More important, everyone is nervous about the price of marijuana. It is bound to drop as more people enter the market. To some extent that can be compensated by growing more, but at some point trying to sell marijuana will be like trying to sell houses in 2008.

Some people might have to actually make money with their real jobs, instead of just using them to launder cash.

But it is not Mendocino County that the Democratic Party bigwigs are worried about. It is the districts where the two war crimes organizations known as political parties are about evenly balanced. The competitive districts that determine which party gets to spend the loot gathered from taxpayers.

Bombing Syria makes Obama look tough, which is generally considered to be a positive thing with the voters. But it might alienate the peace-loving wing of the Democratic Party. The new marijuana policy is meant to placate that wing.

Its hard to tell what dose will work out best. Just enough dope to get people to calm down and forget about all the ways Obama has disappointed the hopes they had for him. Not so much dope as to be too out of it to vote the Democratic Party ticket come election day.

On Targeting Civilians

Targeting civilians is always a war crime or crime against humanity. The leeway for incidental civilian deaths

The Boston Marathon attack, in addition to being an ordinary crime, was a war crime. It is fair to conclude now that the attackers were motivated by religion and anti-imperialist sentiments. One also seemed to have a personal grudge against America because as a non-citizen he was excluded from the national level of boxing competition, and then was further injured when he had his application for citizenship denied. Had he been made a citizen he would doubtless have gone back to boxing and done only injury to other volunteers for that brutal and uncivilized sport.

We cannot say the same for policies made and conducted by powerful politicians, including our own.

President Barack Obama seems to think that if he minimizes his war crimes, crimes against humanity, and attacks on human rights, he is okay. He is just driving a little over the speed limit because his passengers - capitalists and the corporate security state - want him to get to a preconceived goal a little bit faster than the rules allow for.

So if some women and children get blasted to pieces by a drone or a helicopter gunship or trigger-happy U.S. gunmen on patrol somewhere, Barack figures he has his ass covered. I can hear him at the trial: "I never gave orders to purposefully kill civilians."

I imagine his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt would have said the same thing, had anyone been powerful enough to put him on trial. Before World War II, starting with the Japanese invasion of China, President Roosevelt inveighed against any bombing of urban areas. It always involved civilian casualties, and it was a war crime, he pointed out. At least it was a war crime when Japan or Germany or Italy did it. When our ally, the British Empire did it, Roosevelt grew mute. Then he authorized the firebombing of Japanese cities, which was on a far larger scale than had ever been done up until that point. In hypocrisy, at least, the U.S. is Number One.

Or Barack could point to Harry Truman. His team of Democratic Party experts recommended dropping the first two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, after having rejected proposals for demonstration bombings that would have caused minimal casualties, or the destruction of only military targets or personnel. You can almost hear Harry's defense lawyer, "But he did not order the Air Force to bomb civilians. There were some military personnel at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We regret the civilian casualties."

It would take an encyclopedia to cover all of the war crimes and crimes against humanity since the inception of the United States of America.

So don't be surprised in foreigners take American indignation at American civilian casualties with a grain of salt.

Let's get rid of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Let's try George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and other top U.S. decision makers for the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity they have committed.

Let's put an end to U.S. imperialism. Let's remove all U.S. troops from foreign territories.

Only then can there really be Liberty and Justice for All.

See also: war crimes

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.

Settlements, War Crimes, Israel and Palestine

It is a war crime for an aggressor to settle its citizens in a conquered area.

Is it the most serious of war crimes? No, initiating a war is the most serious of war crimes.

Why is it a war crime, when an exactly similar settlement of foreign citizens may be legal in times of peace? Well, a peacetime settlement by foreigners would occur through the invitation of the host country, or through the normal process of paying for land from people who are willing to sell. Settlement during or after a war indicates a plan to retain territory conquered in a criminal manner. It is like the difference between an honest trade and a theft.

Why bring up this topic now? Because today the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report noting that the most recent Israeli settlement in eastern Palestine violates this war crimes law. The implications are large. [See the Press release, Israeli settlements symbolize the acute lack of justice experience by Palestinian People, which links to the full report.]

Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don't think so, though there probably should be. I know the Israeli and other governments continue to hunt down and prosecute alleged war criminals from the Nazi era, over sixty years ago.

If there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, or if the statute of limitations is 60 years, then the entire state of Israel is in trouble. Most Jews in Palestine had converted (perhaps not voluntarily) to Islam by about 700 A.D. Jewish communities that remained were small until the Zionist movement of the late 19th century. The early Zionists were legal immigrants, and as a result several small areas of Palestine had Jewish majorities by World War II.

Most of the post-war Jewish immigration to Palestine can be characterized as illegal. The war that established the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the ejection of non-Jewish Palestinians, followed by Jewish settlements on their land. Thus it is not just the remnants of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, that are at stake. The creation of the State of Israel can be characterized as a war crime.

It is often said that the United Nations (then newly formed, and basically a war organization for fighting Germany and Japan) created the State of Israel. It appears that all the U.N. did was endorse a Jewish semi-autonomous partition zone within Palestine. But supposing the U.N. did in fact back the creation of Israel by settling Jews on lands taken from Palestinians. Then the U.N. itself should be said to have committed a war crime.

The implications are staggering the further we go back in history. What if, after a war of aggression takes place, there is a peace treaty? Does that make it legal to settle on land occupied in a war of aggression? Peace treaties tend to be imposed by aggressors. They are not really voluntary agreements.

What about the settlement of Europeans in colonial nations? What about the United States, which would not exist except for a constant clamor of wars, occupations, and settlements?

If the purpose of war crimes laws is to stop wars and war crimes, then they must be enforced. American settlements occurred, in the main, before the war crime laws were written. Israel, however, creates a different case. It came into existence after the war crimes laws were on the books.

But the real question is, will anyone enforce the war crimes laws? Conquered nations like Japan and Germany have had their leaders prosecuted for war crimes. But no victorious nation has ever been prosecuted for war crimes.

Like Hitler marching into Russia, it looks like the Israeli occupation of eastern Palestine has gone too far, endangering the entire Israeli project. A sane leadership of Israel would cut their losses to hold onto their gains. A sane leadership would trade forgiveness for their earlier crimes against humanity and war crimes in order to hold onto the lands gained by those crimes. A sane leadership would offer to remove all Jewish settlers to Israel proper, in return for an immediate and permanent peace.

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.

Barbaric California Keeps Capital Punishment

Proposition 34, which would have abolished the death penalty in California if it had passed, received 5,550,896 Yes votes, or 47.8% of those who voted on the issue. No voters prevailed: 6,061,701, amounting to 52.2% of the vote.

Compare those results to the Barack Obama win in California: he received 7,262,836 votes to Mitt Romney's 4,580,933, or 59.8% to 37.7%. While neither Obama nor Romney made an issue of the death penalty, presumably most anti-death penalty voters were Obama voters, excepting the 78,123 who voted for Jill Stein, and the 49,981 who voted for Roseanne Barr, who both belong to parties (Green and Peace & Freedom, respectively) that oppose the death penalty. I point this out because it shows there must be a substantial portion of Democratic Party voters who are for the death penalty.

While the death penalty is the legal practice of barbarians (primitive, violent, uncivilized people), it is an ancient and comprehensible practice. None of us are too far removed from barbarism. I am tempted to approve of the death penalty if defined to my liking. I might impose it on war criminals, including the present and most past Presidents of the United States.

I see no reason to impose the death penalty on common murderers. War is the greatest crime of all. No American war criminal has ever suffered the death penalty (although U.S. soldiers many have been executed for refusing to obey orders), and only a few have ever been reprimanded.

In war, it is a war crime to kill a soldier who has surrendered or been captured. After World War II the U.S. executed hundreds of Japanese soldiers for this war crime, among others. It is a strange contradiction that the penalty for killing a prisoner of war (POW) involves the victors killing POWs. More notable is that the preponderance of evidence is that far more captured Japanese soldiers were killed by American soldiers during World War II than the other way around. At least partly this can be explained by the fact of U.S. victory; a lot more Japanese soldiers were captured than the reverse. No American soldier was prosecuted for war crimes resulting from World War II actions.

If a captured soldier, who may have already killed hundreds of his opponents in war, is sacrosanct, why is an ordinary California murderer subject to the death penalty? It is ass-backward thinking. It is barbarian thinking.

If you voted to retain the death penalty, you are a barbarian. I am not sure what would civilize you. Maybe you have some deep-seated anger, and need to work on replacing it with a greater understanding of humanity.

I thought California was a progressive state. We are not even qualified to join the European Union, which prohibits the death penalty. Even Turkey is considering abolishing the death penalty as part of the process of joining the European Union. But then Turkey has been civilized a few thousand years longer than California.

We think of radical Islamists who interpret Sharia as requiring the cutting off of thieve's hands as being barbarians (most interpretations of Islam do not subscribe to this). We think of England, or Great Britain, as civilized, but just two centuries ago petty thieves were sentenced to hanging there. Civilization is a process. It is also a balance, because there may be barbarians outside the gates. In California, the barbarians are already inside the gates. We need to civilize them, to help them understand that their primitive gods and culture are no good here.

Hopefully some day soon California will catch up and join the ranks of civilized governments. Canada abolished the capital punishment in 1976. They seem to be doing well without it. Perhaps some day the United States of America will become as civilized as Canada, Europe, Mexico and other nations that have abolished the death penalty. Meanwhile we are in bed with Saudi Arabia and China, as well as Pakistan and North Korea.



This article originally appeared as Barbarians Inside the Gates: California Keeps the Death Penalty at Mendoday.com.

President Obama and Sergeant Robert Bales

Law tends to complexity when confronted with reality, and international law concerning war crimes is no exception.

President Barack Obama is Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. Sergeant Robert Bales is a member of the U.S. Army who reportedly shot and killed sixteen civilians, including women and children, on March 11, 2012, in the Panjwai district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

Rather than being tried in Afghanistan for his criminal behavior Sergeant Bales has been returned to the United States, under arrest, to be tried. This recalls to us of the imperialist right to extraterritoriality, long viewed as an insulting injustice by Asian nations.

It is possible, and often happens, that a soldier commits a war crime against the commands of his superiors. His superiors are not generally held responsible. However, I would argue that the U.S. (& allies) war against Afghanistan is a war of aggression. To quote the lead American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, during the Nuremberg Tribunal of German/Nazi leaders after World War II:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

To initiate a war is a crime against peace. The initiators are Class A war criminals, to distinguish them from lesser war criminals, like those who follow orders to drop bombs on civilians. Was a crime agaisnt peace committed by President George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration?

One loophole in the crime against peace idea is the word aggression. Who gets to decide who is the aggressor? If a soldier of country A throws a stone over the border with country B and hits a soldier, does country A then have the right to invade country B and execute people as war criminals? Another way of obtaining the same end, denial, can be based on the clear statements of international law that each nation has a right to self-defense.

Sometimes nations go to war by more or less mutual consent, as the great European powers did at the beginning of World War I. Sometimes the aggressor and defender nation roles are clear, at least to neutral parties. Yet often both sides, or even an obvious aggressor, claims that they are engaging in self-defense, which is not a crime against peace or war crime.

The American government, like most governments, characterizes all of its wars as wars of self-defense.

Recall that the armed forces of Afghanistan did not attack the U.S. No Afghans participated in the attack on the World Trade Center. While the pursuit of the criminals behind that crime was certainly justifiable, a massive war of aggression against Afghanistan was unnecessary and, for that matter, mostly ineffective.

There is another argument claiming that President Barack Obama is not responsible for crimes against peace and the specific war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers and mercenaries in Afghanistan. His defenders say that the current President inherited the war from President Bush. But Adolf Hitler died, and so the National Socialist Party leaders hung by the Nuremberg Tribunal merely inherited his war. What really is the difference, except that Germany lost World War II?

Focus back on Sergeant Bales: was he insane at the time of the shootings, and therefore not to be held responsible? That idea, too, presents difficulties. Just as all murderers would like to be freed on the basis of a plea of self-defense, failing that they would all like to escape punishment by reason of momentary insanity.

We may agree that murder and war are insane, but turning that idea into the operational result that war criminals and murderers should never be punished leaves us with no method to deter future wars and murders.

I believe the only U.S. citizen ever convicted of war crimes was William Calley, convicted for his role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. While officially Calley's actions were against orders, in reality he was carrying out a policy decided at much higher levels. He took the fall both for his men and for his superiors. Lyndon Johnson was his commander in Chief, though Johnson might have claimed he inherited the war from John Kennedy.

Robert Bales should never have been in Afghanistan. But he was there, he committed his crimes there, and he should be turned over to the government of Afghanistan for punishment. If they decide he was or is insane, fine by me. Afghanistan would be wise to then call an international tribunal, like the one at Nuremberg, to look at the scope of the matter.

The United States could then extradite Presidents Bush and Obama, their top advisers, their top military commanders, and the members of Congress who voted to permit the war of aggression against Afghanistan to be tried by the international tribunal.

Oops, I forgot: in reality we have the Gruel of International Law. The strong convict the weak, not the other way around.

Ban Armed Drones

Armed drones have been used extensively by the United States to target alleged enemy soldiers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and probably other places around the world. Other nations have developed armed drones, so it is just a matter of time before they are deployed. Without a doubt private, criminal, religious and ideological groups will soon be able to obtain drones.

Killing others from a vantage of complete safety has always been a highly sought goal, from Presidents, Prime Ministers and Generals down to the ordinary person who sees some advantage in killing someone else. Many modern weapons have given some sense of this: artillery, machine guns, air forces, submarines with their deadly torpedoes, and missiles, for instance.

Armed drones give a new level of immunity. The ability of Afghan tribal warriors to strike back against helicopter gunships, bombers, or even artillery was already minimal. Striking back against a drone operated from a command center that can be at the other side of the world is possible only to those who have ICBMs. Not many nations have ICBMs, yet.

The predecessor of the drone is the cruise missile, which really is a drone designed to strike a pre-designated location. Drones give video or other feedback to the operators, allowing more flexible targeting.

Should deploying, or even manufacturing armed drones be designated as a war crime? Or is a drone just another form of artillery or fighting aircraft, to be distinguished by its use, rather than by its lack of an onboard, human pilot?

The idea of chivalrous or just warfare is of course an old one, but the idea of the need for civilized rules of war (and hence war crimes, the breaking of those rules) became widely discussed in Europe after 1850. The main ideas that came out of the discussion before World War I were: avoid killing civilians; treat captured soldiers humanely; and the aggressor nation's leaders are criminals.

The theory is there for anyone to look at. A good place to start is "war crime" at Wikipedia. Unfortunately there has never been an impartial, global system of justice to put war criminals on trial. Thus for instance, after World War II of the many Japanese convicted and sentenced to death for war crimes, a number are now generally thought to be innocent. Despite widespread commission of war crimes by the government of the United States of America and its allies, no victors were convicted or even tried for war crimes. The most obvious and terrible war crimes (aside from the acts of aggression that started the war), the fire bombings of German and Japanese cities and finally the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ordered by President Harry Truman (Democratic Party), were treated as legitimate acts of war (by the victors) even though civilian casualties were far higher than military casualties.

Limits on the use of types weaponry have been made largely based on their secondary effects on civilians. Poisoned gas was banned after World War I, really because of the sheer horror of it, but excused by the possible drifting of poison into civilian areas. Biological agents have also been banned, and civilized nations (though not the U.S.) have banned or limited the use of landmines (See Ottawa Treaty).

Aerial bombardment has always been a problem for both theorists and militarists. Dropping a bomb on an enemy battalion in the countryside might kill some sheep or an unlucky civilian or two, but it is generally considered acceptable. Since firing artillery shells into urban (or presumably suburban) areas was designated a war crime before World War I, most honest people thought dropping bombs on cities was a war crime, by reason of analogy. Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic Party) and Cordell Hull said as much (criticizing Japan for some use of the tactic in China against ally Chiang Kai-shek's troops who used cities as fortresses) making speeches as late as 1939 calling on all nations to not drop bombs on cities. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they did not attack urban areas, only military bases. But when Roosevelt struck back the complete and merciless destruction of Japanese cities was one of his priorities.

We powerless theorists would prefer not to have to classify drone attacks as either legitimate executions of war (when they hit military targets) or war crimes (when they hit civilians). When a nation is at war against an occupying imperialist power, as Afghanistan is now, the average citizen-soldier often stays very close to his family. Deaths of civilians from drone attacks are predictable.

In practice U.S. drones have killed a lot of women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan; many of the adult male casualties were probably civilians too. For me that is reason enough to ban them.

Consider, however, what could happen when drones are more plentiful and are used in a war between two advanced nations. Foot soldiers and probably even soldiers in armored vehicles will be subject to slaughter. Other men will enjoy snacks and hot coffee as they sit in deep bunkers playing playing video games in which real people die.

War itself should be banned. That could be achieved through a disarmament process. Adding new, lethal toys for uncivilized boys will help no one.

In teaching the world to use fighting drones the U.S. has certainly created a monster that will come back to haunt us. Perhaps that is the strategy of the corporate security state. When others start using drones, it will require drone escalation by the U.S., putting more and more power (and money) into the hands of fewer and fewer decision makers.

There is nothing to be gained with armed drones. They have not stopped the Taliban; they just make the survivors madder. The United States should call an immediate halt to the use, manufacture, and development of drones while working on a global treaty to ban their use.