ANYBODY INTERESTED IN WAR CRIMES?


Anybody interested in war crimes?  Crimes against humanity? 

Ooops!  I forgot.  Those don't exist any more.  No such thing.  Why not?  Nuremberg has been restored, and is ready for use. . . .

But most of what goes on in our modern wars could be classified as both war crimes and crimes against humanity.  And since the heyday of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon--napalm, the Christmas bombing of Cambodia, etc.--the U.S. has been the world leader in torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  So if we reactivated Nuremberg,  the U.S. couldn't run the trials; its various leaders (Kissinger, Bush I, Colin Powell, Bush II, Obama) and so many of its military officers and men (and women) would all be on the docket, and trotted out through the underground tunnel into the courtroom.  They would be charged with war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Bradley Manning is alleged to have exposed war crimes.  Certainly the film that he is accused of letting us see--we have all seen it, surely--shows American troops committing war crimes.  But remarkably, none of the troops pictured murdering civilians from a helicopter gun-ship has been charged.  Instead, Bradley Manning has been held in prison without being charged with anything for nearly 1,000 days.  In solitary confinement, naked, for most of a year--but not charged with any crime.  (The United Nations torture investigator has not been allowed to speak with Manning privately.)

Does anybody in the U.S. remember what a writ of "habeas corpus" was?  We used to have a constitutional right to such:  we couldn't be detained indefinitely without being charged with a crime.  Bush II "suspended" that constitutional right--can a president suspend the U. S. Constitution? --in order to run his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.  And despite his promise to close that illegal torture facility and prison, Obama has not done so, nor has he restored habeas corpus.  And Obama has had Bradley Manning imprisoned for most of his term as president.

What have we become--as a nation, as a people?   Our biggest crimes used to be greed and street violence, and what is called "organised crime."  But now our nation practices "organised crime" all around the world.  (Watch out for that drone!)  And as a people, we accept it.

Tuesday is voting day.  Four years ago, I happily voted for Obama--as did the Nobel Committee in Oslo.  I am told I must vote for him again this time.  Why?  Because he isn't as bad as Romney would be.   But Romney hasn't broken a promise about Guantanamo, or expanded our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to include Pakistan and Syria as well.  Romney isn't using unmanned drones to kill people in the Middle East--who, once dead, always turn out to have been members of al Qaida.  Romney hasn't approved torturing Bradley Manning, and is not responsible for Bradley Manning's illegal imprisonment.  Nor has Romney declared that Bradley Manning is guilty--without even being charged!--as Obama did:  "He broke the law."  (Those were the words of our lawyer, law-professor president.) 

So on Tuesday I will vote with my feet.  For the first time since 1956, when I voted for Adlai Stevenson, I won't go to a polling station, or cast an absentee ballot.  I can't.