Thinking aloud about Class-A war crimes trials
Wed Jul 04, 2007 at 05:51:26 PM PDT
There is at least one positive by-product of the trial of Irving Lewis Libby (a.k.a. "Scooter" to friends, "Germ Boy" to office back-biters for promoting the smallpox vaccine, and "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney" to the (vestigial) investigative press). And that is that even a reading public that can read at the level of the average fifth-grader now understands more clearly that the Bush 43 administration lied the US into a war with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And, as a result of that war, more then 3,500 US soldiers died, tens of thousands were injured, perhaps 600,000 or more Iraqis were killed (Lancet article, many of them civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thanks to whistleblowers and Sy Hersh, the Abu Ghraib photos make it clear that US soldiers were involved in torture in Iraq (Exercise your jump option here).
Court cases and reports from Amnesty International into abuses at Guantanamo interrogation facilities in Cuba makes it clear that the abuses were systemmatic and systemic. Brig. General Janice Karpinski, demoted as being nominally in charge of Abu Ghraib, has testified that Rumsfeld's handwriting was on a note approving the "aggressive questioning" techniques, aka torture (some will dispute that it was torture, but if they had it applied to them, they would likely revise their opinion). A book by law professor Alan Dershowitz on under what conditions torture might be used legally highlighted the debate over governmental use of torture. The president's own lawyer Alberto Gonzales wrote the torture memo, and his advocacy of the policy helped him win appointment to Attorney General of the US (to the eternal disgrace of that Congress).
And reports running in no less than the Wall Street Journal on secret CIA international flights called "extraordinary renditions" left little doubt that the US was carrying out an official worldwide program of secret political and military body-snatching (disappearances), torture, and assorted human rights violations. And, in addition, by support of mercenaries and paramilitaries, there was probably a long list of similar operations going on through those outlets, where whistleblowers were not likely to surface (alive at least). All of which was yielding no clear wins in the "war" strategy, and was an actual cause of grievances by long term allies, and the very political groups in the Muslim world that the US claimed to be trying to support.
That's the short backgrounder as to why two pieces of history from World War II have special relevance to the US today: The Nuremberg War Crimes trials, and the Tokyo War Crimes trials. Thanks to Schlinder's List and other movies, even contemporary schoolchildren can have a bit of an insight into conditions at the concentration camps. And youngsters of high school age I know that have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., have been both shocked and moved by what they saw there. There is a movie that runs periodically on Public Broadcasting Service about the Nuremburg Trials, with Spencer Tracy in it, that describes some of the war crimes that the German brass was tried for. A book on Albert Speer, which I think just had his name only in the title, and was based on interviews while he was in prison, was memorable, and gave a deeper insight into the participation of the German industrial machine. Another book on I.G. Farben, I believe by Joseph Gulden (a little hazy on the last name here), documented slave labor and the outline of the daily workings of the crematoria and prisons. And the excellent series (now on DVD) called The World At War, which has actual war footage, also documents the results of some of the German war crimes.
For this diary, I want to focus on the lesser-known of the two war crimes tribunals--the Tokyo Trials. Because one the impeachment issue is resolved, one way or the other, the long arm of history will look to see if America will turn back to the moral standard she set for herself and the rest of the world at the Nuremburg Trials (to hold to the standards spelled out in the Geneva convention); or to continue along the ugly path authored by Alberto Gonzales on torture, and which, IMO, now makes US policy on first-strike warfare and aggressive behavior no different than the imperialist policies espoused by Imperial Japan..
Rather than go into a long history lesson on Japan's imperial policies before and during WWII, I will refer the reader to the excellent book Japan's Imperial Conspiracy: How Emperor Hirohito led Japan into war against the West, by David Bergamini, William Morrow & Co, New York; 1975. It recounts the rape of Nanking (and there is even more gruesome detail in a book of the same name by the late Iris Chang). It recounts the attacks on the Phillipines (including the rape of Manila and the Battan Death march), Dutch East Indes, Pearl Harbor, etc. What strikes one in reading Bergamini's book, especially during the Bush 43 era, is how eerily similar the neo-con philosophy and actions are to the policies of Imperial Japan. The conundrum the US faces now, IMO, is how to square the "self-defense" policy used by the US to enter WWII to reject imperialist actions by Japan, with the current policies of the US, which are almost a carbon-copy (yes, I'm old enough to remember typewriters) of the imperialist policies of Japan. As a nation, what do we stand for? Are we upholding the standards of the Geneva Convention, and the trials of Nuremburg and Tokyo, or have we sunk finally to the standards of dictators like Hitler and Hirohito? And will we stay sunk to that level?
The neo-cons' advocacy of first-strike is well known. Less well known, but relevant, is that Irving Lewis Libby had a special fascination with the history of pre-WWII Japan (see Wikipedia), so there is a very strong hint of deliberate and willful crafting of similar policies.
The question for today is: Will we keep America as "greatest generation" wanted us to, or will we continue to walk down the path of dictatorships?
Now to the "Tokyo" trials. Bergamini says:
About 4,000 of the suspects were brought to the trial before US, British, Austrialina and Chinese military tribunals which sat in scattered courtrooms from Guam to Rangoon and from Timor to Tokyo. Of the 4,000 some 800 were acquitted, some 2,400 were sentenced to three years or more of imprisonment, and 809 were put to death--ibid, p 1048.
But it was the major Class-A war criminals that were tried in Manila in the Phillippines and in Tokyo, Japan. The case to focus on here, for present purposes (as it might be applied to the Bush Administration) is the controversial case of General Yamashita, the "Tiger of Malaya," (ibid., p. 1049 ff.). Bergamini argues that US General MacArthur chose to try Yamashita
to serve as a scapegoat whose trial would distract Fillipinos during the early months of the lenient (my emphasis, supplied) Allied Occupation of Tokyo (ibid. p. 1049).
While there were plenty of atrocities, MacArthur's prosecutors made no effort to show that they were ordered by Yamashita, Bergamini says. And all Japanese witnesses said the Japanese General was in the hills, with no means to communicate with the aristocratic Naval Special Landing Forces that were committing most of the atrocities. Half of the press "covering" the Tokyo trials were actually physically located in Manila, and thus not eyewitnesses to the trial. Bergamini adds:
Newsweek described spectators as "scandalized with the break from Anglo-Saxon justice," and observed that even third-hand hearsay is admitted as evidence. (ibid., p. 1050
Now for the money quote, which will bring us to the conclusion:
Despite the evidence .... Yamashita's judges decided that a military commander, even when uninformed and countermanded by higher authority, shoud still remain responsible for the acts of his troops. ... It meant, in effect, that legal responsibility for war crimes could be adjudged, by reductio ad absurdam, to anyone in a chain of command regardless of his character, motives, and state of knowledge. ibid., p. 1052
P.S., the preface was written by William Flood Webb, a very distinguished Austrialian judge who sat on the tribunals for tw and a half years. IMO, the Yamashita decision will be pivotal in the future war crimes trials of the Bush Administration neo-cons (and possibly Henry Kissinger, for crimes stretching from Nixon to Reagan, and quite possibly even to the Bush Administration.
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