occurred. According to classical international
law, even if it had been illegal, it would still have been outside of the
jurisdiction of any courts other than the then existing courts of the nations
in which it occurred.
Not
only did the Nuremberg Trials violate the classical doctrine of national
sovereignty, they didn't even judge legality. They judged morality.
That's additionally troubling, because the judgment of morality isn't a
proper function of either a secular civilian court or a military tribunal.
It might legitimately enter into a legislative debate, but it should be
avoided in a judicial process. When morality becomes the judicial
standard, then the judiciary is at risk of being usurped by religion.
So,
a trumped-up, allegedly secular, ex post facto, unilaterally imposed, international
jurisdiction was created to address the grievances of one particular ethnic/religious
group, the Jews. I can't help but wonder. Were they merely
seeking a redress of grievances, or was there more to it than that?
Before the 9/11 attacks, after which I mostly stopped watching the U.S.
network news, I noticed the similarity of modern Israeli forces to the
Nazis, of World War II. They wore similar garb, carried similar gear,
and behaved similarly. They kicked down doors, ran around firing
their weapons, shot missiles into civilian villages in southern Lebanon,
and bulldozed the homes of the families of suspected Palestinian terrorists
— not the homes of terrorists, but the homes of the families of
suspected
terrorists. They killed Rachel
Corrie with a bulldozer, while she was trying to prevent just such
an atrocity. I'm not aware of any member of the Israeli forces who
was ever brought before a military war crimes tribunal, a criminal court,
or even a Rabbi, to answer for the murder of Rachel Corrie. Back
then, the Israelis were behaving a lot like nazis (the lower case n
is intended). Extrapolating from the previous news (I don't watch
the news much nowadays), I'd say that, probably, they still are.
If it walks like a Nazi, quacks like a Nazi, and shoots like a Nazi, then
maybe it's a nazi.
I'm
not among the Nazi hunters. What the Nazis did was atrocious, but
it wasn't illegal at the times and in the places where they did it.
Maybe it was proper to punish them, but not by transforming classical international
law into a travesty of its previous self, and paving the way for world
domination by whoever can gain control of the international judiciary.
Furthermore, the people who wanted to punish the Nazis failed to acknowledged
that there were guilty parties on both sides of that war. The Allies
used bombs intended to destroy dams, releasing reservoirs of water onto
civilians. They carpet-bombed civilian cities, regardless of civilian
casualties, and were party to various other wartime horrors. Even
so, the prosecutions were politically selective. Neither Churchill,
Truman, Stalin, nor any of their underlings, were ever brought before a
war crimes tribunal. That the Allied authorities regarded their actions
as necessary is irrelevant. They were still responsible for atrocities.
The
horror and brutality of World War II was typical of such things.
Governments throughout all of human history have behaved similarly.
The U.S. government isn't an exception. Hitler admired the way that
the U.S. government treated the Indians. In 1928, he praised the
Americans because they had, in his words, "gunned down the millions of
Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under
observation in a cage". Massacres and reservations, usually a euphemism
for Indian concentration camps, were common ways of dealing with the Indians.
In recent decades, the U.S. government has committed atrocities in, at
least, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yugoslavia,
El Salvador, Panama, Columbia, and Guatemala. Domestically, it has
behaved atrociously in various places, such as Ruby Ridge and the Mt. Carmel
Center. Covert U.S. government forces conducted the 9/11
attacks, creating excuses for additional repressive legislation, and
additional wars.
In
his article Evil,
In Thy Service, on page 2 of the December 2017 issue, Robert H.
Outman noted that people in herds are more prone to evil behavior than
are people alone. I suggest that evil behavior is more likely, and
will be more severe, in a bigger herd. Governments are big herds.
Once people band together into governments, Nazis, Jews, Americans, or
anything else, their behavior can become equally evil. In The
Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin commented that, while only society can
provide stability, only the individual has the power of moral choice.
I don't know how to eliminate the evil that's inherent in governments.
The best thing that I can suggest is that individuals need to educate themselves
about the principles of liberty, and about the doctrines of social contract
and personal sovereignty. I've written various essays on those topics.
They're available in Pharos, under the heading Liberty,
Sovereignty, and the Doctrine of Social Contract. Anybody
who's read this article has made a good beginning. The next step
is to study the essays.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
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