Wirz, a Swiss immigrant, who held two medical degrees from universities in Paris and Berlin, oversaw the final days of the camp. Originally designed to hold 10,000 prisoners, by May of 1864 the number had swelled to over 32,000. Of the approximately 45,000 prisoners of war who entered the camp, some 13,000 never left. These men died in the most wretched of conditions from malnutrition, disease, exposure, and some were outright murdered in cold blood.
Wirz's trial in August of 1865 was the Nuremberg of its day. Newspapers across the country featured daily front page coverage not unlike the 24/7 coverage major stories receive nowadays on cable TV news. Eventually, Wirz was found guilty and hanged on November 10, 1865. He became the first person in history to die for having committed "war crimes".
Fast forward some eighty years or so. Before the Second World War had even ended, the Allies were considering what to do with the Nazi leaders and their subordinates. Churchill and Stalin were all for lining them up against the nearest wall and summarily executing them. Roosevelt, and later his successor Truman, would have none of it. Their principle argument against summary execution was that it would make the Allies no different from the Nazis.
No, the Americans said, we needed to show the world that justice would be meted out even to the most unjust. And that the principles of law would prevail even for the lawless. The Nuremberg Trials began in November of 1945 with the major captured Nazi leaders the first to be tried. Of the twenty-two tried, three were actually acquitted while the rest were either hanged or given lengthy prison sentences. (The exception being Herman Goering who cheated the hangman by swallowing cyanide supplied by an unwitting American guard.)
The trials continued through 1949, during which time, others who conspired, abetted, and or, committed other war crimes were brought to justice. The Nuremberg Trials were the first in history in which the political, military, and government leaders of a sovereign country were charged and tried by an international tribunal representing the civilized nations of the world. They became the gold standard by which nations and their leaders would be judged for the next forty years. And to a certain extent acted as a deterrent for any would-be future corrupt and murderous government.
But most importantly, the Nuremberg trials declared that no individual no matter how great and powerful, no nation, could act with impunity and disregard for the rights and freedoms of any person.
That is until now.
The charge that the Bush administration and its many minions and underlings are guilty of war crimes has been bandied about for years now. But it is only lately as more and more high-ranking civilian and military officials have begun to speak out that we have substantive bases for such charges. To quote Frank Rich in today's New York Times:
"On those larger issues, the evidence is in, merely awaiting adjudication. Mr. Bush’s 2005 proclamation that "we do not torture" was long ago revealed as a lie. Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated detainee abuse for the Army, concluded that "there is no longer any doubt" that "war crimes were committed." Ms. Mayer uncovered another damning verdict: Red Cross investigators flatly told the C.I.A. last year that America was practicing torture and vulnerable to war-crimes charges."
But it is something else he wrote in his column that I found most telling and most troubling:
"So hot is the speculation that war-crimes trials will eventually follow in foreign or international courts that Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, has publicly advised Mr. Feith, Mr. Addington and Alberto Gonzales, among others, to 'never travel outside (my emphasis) the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel.'"
It seems that the lessons learned from Andersonville and Nuremberg have not been lost on the rest of the world. But inside America, those who are charged with war crimes have nothing to fear. And the symbol of "Lady Liberty" has been permanently replaced by the hooded prisoner in Abu Gharib.
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