War "Crimes of Aggression" -- Nuremberg to Iraq?

I strongly recommend that any who can try to catch the re-run of an ABA International Law Section panel presentation that appeared on C-Span 3, today, 11/11/05, featuring both the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Trials, Benjamin Ferencz:

http://www.benferencz.org/

http://www.humanmedia.org/program_ferencz.php3

and his fellow prosecutor and wider friend and colleague, Henry King:

http://www.lauferfilm.com/king/

currently U.S. Director of the Canada-U.S. Law Institute. The two men have had distinguished careers in the field of international law, following studies respectively at CCNY and Harvard Law and Yale undergrad and legal studies.

Both were quite young and barely graduated from law school when they were asked to take on the awesome task of the Nuremberg war criminal trials. Each did on the scene research into the abysmal acts of Nazi leaders in the death camps and also the murderous slaughters of civilians (a million or more) carried out under "superior orders" by German troops on the road to Stalingrad -- with the presumption that even small children, if spared, might become enemies of Germany with the knowledge of the murders of their parents.

Both movingly report the grim details of their first hand experiences and each is disturbed that the Bush administration may also have committed the major crime of aggressive war-making established at Nuremberg -- a war "Crime of Aggression" -- unjustified by actual or "presumptive" threats of a future attack by another nation(s). As each points out, this excuse can be used to justify _any_ aggressive war.

Following upon the moving presentation of these two impressive figures in the history of the evolution of international law in the last century -- Ferencz now 85 and going strong and King "older," Michael Ssharf, Director of the Case Western Reserve Institute of International Law:

http://www.crimesofwar.org/expert/paradigm-scharf.html

offered a follow up description of recent legal moves -- Bosnia, Rwanda, and Iraq -- attempting to deal through the rule of law with the acts of genocide committed in each. He noted the delay for almost two generations in the acceptance by the German public of the reality of the Holocaust and the justice of the Nuremberg trials, the resistance of the Serbs to the wrong doing by their leaders in Bosnia, leading to a prediction that the trial of Saddam Hussein may, too, be seen by many in Iraq as an unjust imposition upon the former leader of that disrupted nation, all too likely not resolving the emerging internal conflicts there.

All obviously deplore the Bush administration attempts to savage the newly established International Criminal Court now supported by more than 100 nations including those of Europe and our near neighbors, Mexico and Canada.

Anyone concerned, in the words of Benjamin Ferencz, to make 'law' rather than 'war' the means to maintain peace and to resolve human conflicts will want to see any available replays of this deeply moving presentation by two men who were among the first on the scene to witness the horrors of the Nazi depredations.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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