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by William Pfaff
The irresistible impulse to aggrandize power, which has been evident in American foreign policy since (at least) the fall of the East-West bipolar system in 1991, was demonstrated last week by the NSA revelations of Edward Snowden. Now there is a new manifestation of apparent illicit power assertion revealed by a devastating front-page report in the
Marlise Simons of The
This was a departure from the principle established in previous war crimes trials that commanders were implicated in their subordinates' crimes as they had all been part of "joint criminal enterprises." It also seemed an abandonment of the principle asserted -- with the specific support, even insistence, of American authorities at the time -- at the Nuremburg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II, declaring the personal responsibility of Nazi political and military officials for the crimes committed by Germany.
A Danish judge at the
They and outside international lawyers and human rights groups contend that the acquittals rewrote the standards of earlier decisions in a way that they suggest weaken the court's previous insistence on the responsibility of officers in atrocity cases occurring within their areas of command. This is said by critics to open the possibility that, in the future, the
Ms. Simons quotes other unnamed judges at The Hague as saying they will not support Judge Meron's expected re-election as tribunal president this autumn because of their discomfort at "unacceptable" pressures they have felt from him concerning these recent acquittals, and in favor of preparing a permanent closure of the tribunal, as the U.S. government appears to want. A 2005 WikiLeaks document often cited by Judge Meron's critics, ostensibly originating in the U.S. Embassy at The Hague, is said to describe Judge Meron as "the Tribunal's pre-eminent supporter" of the U.S. official outlook.
What is the significance of all this? In the opinion of this writer, it reflects the long-standing American (and Israeli) concern that their officers or government figures might one day find themselves before the court on charges of breaking international law or as bearing responsibility for war crimes.
U.S. forces during the Vietnam War committed attacks that witnesses and correspondents considered clearly illegal, including the notorious Phoenix Program of selected assassinations, which I myself witnessed in operation, and attacks on civilians, as in the My Lai Massacre and other cases, and the effect on civilians of the widespread use of Agent Orange. Torture and imprisonment without trial have been frequent during the so called war against terror. The American army's blitzkrieg-like "Shock and Awe" assaults on Baghdad and Fallujah during the Iraq War had as their purpose terrorization of populations; and its use of fragmentation and depleted uranium munitions, which by now has been well established by independent inquiries, have had devastating permanent effects on civilian victims.
The Israeli army and air force have also used fragmentation munitions in Lebanon and concede having used white phosphorous in civilian neighborhoods during attacks on Gaza. In 2009, the former head of the international law department of Israel's military establishment, Daniel Reisner, said, "International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."
George Bisharat of the
This would seem the explanation of current efforts to neutralize or close down the
It constitutes another example of that craving for power and what might be called totalitarian national security (at others' expense) that characterizes the NSA program (apparently with some cooperation from Britain's GCHQ) for mass interception and exploitation of the content of international communications, including the communications of allied democratic societies. Most democracies are seen as threatening, no doubt, because they are the states that possess the legal and moral standing to challenge these American efforts to destroy the established norms of international conduct, as proclaimed by the
Article: Copyright © Tribune Media Services, Inc.
"Hague Tribunal Controversy Hints at US-Israeli Aims"