Untitled Document
"War crimes: Violations of the law and customs of war."- Principles
of the Nuremberg Charter and Judgment, Principle VI b (1950)
We've finally become the barbarian horde that the world has always feared.
How so? At home, the Bushites are implementing their fascistic militarization
of US culture.[1] Abroad, their minions have been implementing the illegal conquest
and occupation of Iraq with horrific impact: the indiscriminate slaughter of
more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilian non-combatants;[2] and the unnecessary
destruction of the world's most important museums, antiquities, and archaeological
sites.[3]
Focusing for the moment on the latter outrage, the pre-war Bush administration
and the Pentagon were repeatedly warned by world-class scholars and international
officials that: Iraq is literally the cradle of human civilization; and the
invading US military must not allow Iraq's priceless patrimony to be disturbed,
looted, or destroyed.[4]
Moreover, international law prohibits belligerent occupants - like the US military
in Iraq - from confiscating, destroying, or damaging historical monuments, antiquities,
works of art, and institutions devoted to the arts and sciences. Regardless
of their ownership status, such cultural properties are to be treated as private
property, and therefore beyond the reach of the occupant. For the applicable
laws of war, see Article 56 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, and the 1954 Hague
Convention Relative to the Protection of Cultural Properties in Case of Armed
Conflict. Additionally, any violation of the law of war constitutes a war crime.[5]
Nevertheless, the Bushites - who are the belligerent occupants - subsequently
allowed widespread looting while they blithely looked the other way.
Furthermore, the Pentagon's thuggish brass and ignorant field marshals have
been willfully implementing the destruction of the world's oldest archaeological
sites.
For instance, they've constructed a vibrationally-pulverizing US air base adjacent
to the Ziggurat. And they've been conducting archaeologically-damaging military
operations next to the Biblically-significant ancient cities of Ur (the patriarch
Abraham's birthplace) and Babylon (site of the Babylonian Captivity and the
Handwriting On The Wall).[6]
To place the magnitude of the Bushites' outrageous war crimes against 5,000
years of human civilization in proper perspective: an Oxford scholar says "You'd
have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find
looting on this scale"; and a Boston University professor of archaeology
calls it "the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years."[7]
Outside the USA, the world is quite understandably outraged at the ghastly
carnage and wanton destruction wrought by this depraved war against the cradle
of civilization. Inside the USA, the morally-blind American people are yawning
indifferently: "Pass me the chips and the remote, dude. We're gonna watch
the next episode of 'Empire'!"
It couldn't be clearer that the American people don't realize - or don't care
- that their own nation is committing numerous war crimes and is on an unsustainable
collision-course with the rest of humankind. If they did, they'd be idiomatically
stating the obvious: "Something's gotta give, or this planet's toast!"[8]
ENDNOTES
[1] Evan Augustine Peterson III's two-part OS essay, "American Militarism".
[Part 1 concludes that the military-industrial complex's consolidation of political
and economic power, combined with its corrupting secrecy, has produced our war-dependent
economy. Part 2 defines ‘militarism’, concludes that the regressive
right is deliberately implementing the militarization of American culture, and
that the federal government's massive over-investment in defense is tipping
the balance away from a democratic republic and toward neo-fascism.)]
A. "Part
1: Is The USA Addicted To War?" (May 2005):
B. "Part
2: On Celebrating Militaristic Nationalism" (July 2005):
[2] Evan Augustine Peterson III's October 31, 2004 NFPNZ essay "A
Question Of Conscience: How Many More? British Study Concludes That 100,000
Civilian Deaths Have Been Caused By Iraq War Violence" [This disturbing
study is the tip of the evidentiary iceberg, when one considers the large number
of prosecutable war crimes that have been committed by Americans in Iraq - like
their illegal invasion, routine acts of torture in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere,
indiscriminate applications of lethal force in sieges like Fallujah, widespread
use of napalm bombs and depleted-uranium munitions, etc.]
[3] UCSD Professor Emeritus Chalmers Johnson's must-read July 8, 2005 CD/TP
essay, "The Smash
Of Civilizations" [Reports in lurid detail the Bush administration's
‘privatization’ of the antiquities trade in Iraq, and the US military's
wanton pillaging and intentional destruction of Iraq's 5,000 year-old cultural
heritage (all of which are war crimes).]
[4] Chalmers Johnson, ibid.
[5] Consider three authoritative definitions of "war crime":
a. "The term 'war crime' is the technical expression for a violation of the
law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. Every violation of
the law of war is a war crime." Source: U.S. Dept. of Army, Field Manual
27-10, The Law Of Land Warfare 178, para. 499 (1956).
b. "War crimes: Violations of the law and customs of war." Source: Principles
of the Nüremberg Charter and Judgment, Principle VI b, 5 U.N. GAOR, Supp.
No. 12, at 11-14, para. 99, U.N. Doc. A/1316 (1950).
c. "War Crime. Conduct that violates international laws governing war."
Source: Black's Law Dictionary, Seventh Edition (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1999),
p.1577.
[6] Chalmers Johnson, ibid.
