[noam_chomsky]_if_the_nuremberg_laws_were_applied(bookos.org).pdf

7/28/2019 [Noam_Chomsky]_If_The_Nuremberg_Laws_Were_Applied(Bookos.org).pdf

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If the Nuremberg laws were applied...

Excerpt from a talk by Noam Chomsky, date unavailable

Source: Radio Free Maine

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would havebeen hanged. By violation of the Nuremberg laws I mean the same kind of crimes for

which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And Nuremberg means Nuremberg and Tokyo.

So first of all you've got to think back as to what people were hanged for at Nurembergand Tokyo. And once you think back, the question doesn't even require a moment's waste

of time. For example, one general at the Tokyo trials, which were the worst, General

Yamashita, was hanged on the grounds that troops in the Philippines, which weretechnically under his command (though it was so late in the war that he had no contact

with them -- it was the very end of the war and there were some troops running around

the Philippines who he had no contact with), had carried out atrocities, so he was hanged.Well, try that one out and you've already wiped out everybody.

But getting closer to the sort of core of the Nuremberg-Tokyo tribunals, in Truman's case

at the Tokyo tribunal, there was one authentic, independent Asian justice, an Indian, who

was also the one person in the court who had any background in international law[Radhabinod Pal], and he dissented from the whole judgment, dissented from the whole

thing. He wrote a very interesting and important dissent, seven hundred pages -- you can

find it in the Harvard Law Library, that's where I found it, maybe somewhere else, andit's interesting reading. He goes through the trial record and shows, I think pretty

convincingly, it was pretty farcical. He ends up by saying something like this: if there is

any crime in the Pacific theater that compares with the crimes of the Nazis, for which

they're being hanged at Nuremberg, it was the dropping of the two atom bombs. And he

says nothing of that sort can be attributed to the present accused. Well, that's a plausibleargument, I think, if you look at the background. Truman proceeded to organize a major

counter-insurgency campaign in Greece which killed off about one hundred and sixtythousand people, sixty thousand refugees, another sixty thousand or so people tortured,

political system dismantled, right-wing regime. American corporations came in and took

it over. I think that's a crime under Nuremberg.

Well, what about Eisenhower? You could argue over whether his overthrow of thegovernment of Guatemala was a crime. There was a CIA-backed army, which went in

under U.S. threats and bombing and so on to undermine that capitalist democracy. I think

that's a crime. The invasion of Lebanon in 1958, I don't know, you could argue. A lot of

people were killed. The overthrow of the government of Iran is another one -- through aCIA-backed coup. But Guatemala suffices for Eisenhower and there's plenty more.

Kennedy is easy. The invasion of Cuba was outright aggression. Eisenhower planned it,

incidentally, so he was involved in a conspiracy to invade another country, which we canadd to his score. After the invasion of Cuba, Kennedy launched a huge terrorist campaign

against Cuba, which was very serious. No joke. Bombardment of industrial installations

with killing of plenty of people, bombing hotels, sinking fishing boats, sabotage. Later,
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under Nixon, it even went as far as poisoning livestock and so on. Big affair. And then

came Vietnam; he invaded Vietnam. He invaded South Vietnam in 1962. He sent the

U.S. Air Force to start bombing. Okay. We took care of Kennedy.

Johnson is trivial. The Indochina war alone, forget the invasion of the Dominican

Republic, was a major war crime.

Nixon the same. Nixon invaded Cambodia. The Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia

in the early '70's was not all that different from the Khmer Rouge atrocities, in scalesomewhat less, but not much less. Same was true in Laos. I could go on case after case

with them, that's easy.

Ford was only there for a very short time so he didn't have time for a lot of crimes, but he

managed one major one. He supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which wasnear genocidal. I mean, it makes Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait look like a tea

party. That was supported decisively by the United States, both the diplmatic and the

necessary military support came primarily from the United States. This was picked upunder Carter.

Carter was the least violent of American presidents but he did things which I think would

certainly fall under Nuremberg provisions. As the Indonesian atrocities increased to a

level of really near-genocide, the U.S. aid under Carter increased. It reached a peak in1978 as the atrocities peaked. So we took care of Carter, even forgetting other things.

Reagan. It's not a question. I mean, the stuff in Central America alone suffices. Support

for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon also makes Saddam Hussein look pretty mild in terms

of casualties and destruction. That suffices.

Bush. Well, need we talk on? In fact, in the Reagan period there's even an InternationalCourt of Justice decision on what they call the "unlawful use of force" for which Reagan

and Bush were condemned. I mean, you could argue about some of these people, but I

think you could make a pretty strong case if you look at the Nuremberg decisions,Nuremberg and Tokyo, and you ask what people were condemned for. I think American

presidents are well within the range.

Also, bear in mind, people ought to be pretty critical about the Nuremberg principles. I

don't mean to suggest they're some kind of model of probity or anything. For one thing,they were ex post facto. These were determined to be crimes by the victors after they had

won. Now, that already raises questions. In the case of the American presidents, theyweren't ex post facto. Furthermore, you have to ask yourself what was called a "warcrime"? How did they decide what was a war crime at Nuremberg and Tokyo? And the

answer is pretty simple. and not very pleasant. There was a criterion. Kind of like an

operational criterion. If the enemy had done it and couldn't show that we had done it, thenit was a war crime. So like bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a war

crime because we had done more of it than the Germans and the Japanese. So that wasn't

a war crime. You want to turn Tokyo into rubble? So much rubble you can't even drop an


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