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While reading a report in the Washington Post
(Sunday, 6 January 2008, p. A10) on Republican Presidential candidates who
were campaigning in New Hampshire, I came upon an arresting paragraph that
referred to an “exchange [that] capped a six-way argument sparked by
host Charlie Gibson, who asked whether the candidates support [President
George W.] Bush’s policy of preemptive war. The leading
candidates”—other than Representative Ron Paul, of
course—“all embraced the policy.” This enthusiastic
near-unanimity led me to ponder the subject in a way that the Washington
Post’s reporter (as well as Charlie Gibson) apparently did not.
The
terms “preemptive strike” and “preemptive war” are
euphemisms. The unvarnished nouns are “attack” and
“aggression.” Aggression is a “war crime” under the
contemporary Law of Nations. That was the fundamental principle
applied in the Nuremberg Trials: namely, that the Nazi leaders had conspired
to, and did, seize control of and misuse the government and armed forces of
Germany for the purpose of waging unlawful wars—wars of
aggression—against Germany’s neighbors. Indeed, the extensive
documentary history of the Nazis’ crimes published by the United States
Government Printing Office in the late 1940s was entitled simply, and
accurately, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Nazi aggression did not
commence only with actual hostilities, either. The very first document that
evidenced the Nazis’ aggression against Russia was the
plan—repeat, plan—entitled Aufbau Ost for movement
of the German Heer and Luftwaffe into portions of occupied
Poland, merely preparatory to invasion.
A
common complaint is that the Nuremberg Trials were examples of ex post facto
law, that they were hypocritical (inasmuch as one of the brace of original
aggressors in World War II, Stalin’s Russia, sat in judgment of her
erstwhile ally, Hitler’s Germany), that the prosecutorial and juridical
procedures employed did not comport with due process, and so on. Even if all
of these criticisms are to some degree just (and surely at least a few of
them are), nonetheless: (i) however novel it may have been in the 1940s, the
Nuremberg principle that aggression is a “war crime” is not novel
today, perforce of the results of the Nuremberg Trials themselves; and (ii)
having been applied by the United States in those trials, to the point of
hanging various defendants on the strength of such charges, the principle
remains applicable in equity to wayward public officials in the United States
today.
The
concept that a war of aggression is a “war crime” was not
something first introduced into the Law of Nations at Nuremberg in the late
1940s, either. Long before Nuremberg, it was widely accepted that launching a
war was unjustifiable: (i) in the absence of an actual attack on, or an
imminent danger thereof to, the nation engaging in hostilities; (ii) simply
to weaken another country militarily, or to prevent her from becoming a
possible threat in the future; or (iii) to impose on another country a form
of government that was supposedly more benign or progressive than the one she
happened to have. See, e.g., Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace
(1646), Book II, Chapter I, §§ IV, V, XVII; Chapter XXII,
§§ V, XXII.
Moreover,
even if the concept that a war of aggression is a “war crime” had
never been part of the Law of Nations, it has always been part of the supreme
law of the United States: For “the genius and character of our
institutions are peaceful, and the power to declare war was not conferred
upon Congress for the purposes of aggression and aggrandizement.” Fleming
v. Page, 50 U.S. (9 Howard) 603, 614 (1850). And “[t]he
Constitution * * * invests the President, as Commander in Chief, with the
power to wage war which Congress has declared.” Ex parte Quirin,
317 U.S. 1, 26 (1942). So, if Congress cannot constitutionally declare a war
of aggression, the President cannot wage one—let alone wage such a war
without any Congressional declaration at all. And if Congress does purport to
declare (or otherwise license) a war of aggression, and the President does
purport to wage one, everyone involved is guilty of a violation of his
“Oath or Affirmation, to support th[e] Constitution.” Article VI,
cl. 2. Therefore, all of their actions are illegal—and if perpetrated
other than under the proven influence of insanity or other equivalent mental
disease or defect, are “war crimes.”
What,
then, had I and thousands of others read in the Washington Post? That
all but one of the leading Republican candidates for President of the United
States possibly are assuring the country that they will behave as “war
criminals” if elected President, by continuing and even extending the
Bush regime’s policy of “preemptive war”! I say
“possibly,” because it may be that these hucksters—or the
masterminds of political propaganda and agitation who turn the keys in the
back of their heads to wind up their mouths—can produce some convoluted
theory as to why the Bush’s regime’s version of “preemptive
war” against “Islamo-fascism” throughout the whole world
squares with the Constitution. If so, they should be afforded the opportunity
in the court of public opinion, if not some other court, to present that
exculpatory argument to their fellow Americans.
This
explanation not only is mandatory, but also may be more important right now
than the candidates’ being pressed to detail their positions on the two
crucial issues I have emphasized in other commentaries: namely, (i) the
on-going self-destruction of this country’s monetary and banking
systems, and (ii) the creation of a national police state under color of
providing for “homeland security.” For any further
“preemptive wars” will strain America’s already
overextended public and private financial structures beyond the point of
collapse, which will provide an excuse for the Dark Forces in the Disgrace of
Columbia to complete and attempt to put into full operation a national police
state.
So,
Mr. and Mrs. America, see—in just two sentences in the Washington
Post—how far your country has sunk into the murky depths of
History’s septic tank, when all the leading Republican Presidential
“candidates [other than Ron Paul] support Bush’s policy of
preemptive war,” and apparently no one in the big media considers this
“support,” in and of itself, a complete and absolute
disqualification for nomination, let alone election—or even asks what
such “support” legally entails, so that the question of
disqualification can be put before the general public. Now, precisely what do
you intend to do about it?
I,
for one, should not wish to conclude that evidence sufficient to condemn Nazis
at Nuremberg has been transmogrified into a qualification for electing
Republicans (or anyone else) to high office in Washington. I, for one, should
hope that this country has not forgotten the most sanguinary lesson the
history of the Twentieth Century teaches. I, for one, should hope that some
plausible, innocent explanation of what these Republican candidates say they
“support” is available. I, for one, should hope that, if such an
explanation is not forthcoming from them, then all of the Democratic
aspirants for nomination will roundly repudiate “preemptive wars”
in no uncertain terms. And I, for one, should hope that, if neither the
Republican nor the Democratic “front runners” renounce wars of
aggression as instruments of American foreign policy—and even if they
do—then Representative Ron Paul will be elected President. But perhaps
I am only one, or only one of a few. Too few. If so, Heaven help America from
the darkness closing in upon her—because nothing else can.
Edwin
Vieira
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