Remember Nürnberg, End long, lawless aggression — Rocky Anderson Challenge

Verdict in Nuremberg

U. S. Foreign policy should focus on moral, security, economic aspects of our actions

From presidential candidate Rocky Anderson’s Foreign Policy speech “The Challenge”

Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Recap, update

The end of World War II saw unprecedented goodwill in the world toward the United States of America. This goodwill was then squandered, Anderson says. The pattern was repeated after the events of September 11, 2001. As global superpower, we have an unparalleled responsibility to be a moral leader in the world but to do so we must repair a record of aggression and backlash. 

General Dwight David Eisenhower

59-year Record of lawless Aggression 

(34th-44th U.S. Presidents Eisenhower to Obama)

Historically, both Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of extreme illicit aggression against other countries. [Republican President Dwight David] Eisenhower ordered the overthrow of the democratic governments of Iran and Guatemala.

The 37th U.S. president, Richard M. Nixon [in lock step with the 35th and 36th presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson], escalated the war in Vietnam (leaving 3 million Indochinese dead).

Both Presidents Gerald R. Ford and James (Jimmy) Earl Carter [presidents 38 and 39] supported vicious regimes such as Suharto, and the Shah of Iran.

NOTE: Army officer and political leader (Indonesia’s president 1967 -1998) Suharto’s government “was basically an authoritarian regime based on military power.” The Shah of Iran (1941-1979), Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was the oldest son of Reza Shah Pahlavi, an army officer who in 1925 became the ruler of Iran and founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. Shah means king of kings, emperor. The younger Shah retained a pro-Western foreign policy

Former UK and U.S. (Blair-G.W. Bush)
heads of state
Malaysian tribunal found Bush and Blair 
guilty of committing 
crimes against humanity
during the Iraq war

William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton [42nd president] waged destructive economic and military attacks against the Iraqi people (sanctions left roughly 500,000 children dead) in lock step with 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush.

Son of the 41st president, George Walker Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ essentially repeated the 40ieth president's, Ronald Reagan’s, ‘War on Terror’ from 1981 focused on supporting right-wing military juntas in Latin America, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths

The 44th president, Barack Obama, has continued this trend: expanding the war in Afghanistan, continuing the occupation of Iraq (even after the troop withdrawal, 20,000 U.S. personnel are to be stationed in Baghdad), and bombing Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

President Obama has continued the tradition of transforming overwhelming global goodwill into hatred and hostility. The huge international optimism that met his coming to office has now evaporated. In the Middle East between 2009 and 2010, negative appraisals of his presidency tripled.

Broad Global Consequences

Given the aggression we have [the U.S. has] historically displayed toward the rest of the world, these attitudes are not surprising and the blowback we experience in the form of terrorism and attacks on our military personnel is predictable.

The ‘Arab Spring,” with citizens rising up to overthrow dictatorships, many of which are (or have been) supported by the United States (examples are Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen), reflects millions of people’s resentment toward U.S.-bolstered oppressive governments.

Narrower Impact Abroad

"U.S. President Barack Obama approves
new policy expanding
CIA drone campaign in
Yemen"

We cannot hope to lead the world when much of it sees us as a threat. A 2006 Pew Research poll showed that among European and Middle Eastern countries, we are viewed as the biggest threat to world peace. That, of course, is a major obstacle to persuading countries to support us in our foreign policy efforts, building international coalitions, and persuading other countries to respect international law when we don’t do it ourselves.

Impact at home

The economic costs of our self-defeating empire-building are staggering. Even in 2008, the costs of the Iraq conflict were estimated at $3 trillion – (20 percent of the national debt!)

As of mid 2011, our air conditioning budget in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeded the entire budget of NASA.

We have some 1,000 overseas military bases throughout the globe (a value of close to $150 Billion). These costs cannot be justified, particularly at a time when we are failing to feed our poor and provide basic health care for millions of our citizens.

Rocky Anderson wants to end the foreign policy of lawless aggression

“The Anderson administration,” says his ‘Challenge,’ “will focus on the key moral and economic elements of our foreign policy.

There will be a key distinction made between militarism and empire-building (historically, the primary emphasis of our foreign policy), and national defense (that is, the security of our citizens).

The Rocky Anderson policy, he says, “will be based around three pillars: 

• Eliminate militarism and empire-building: The U.S. will never again engage in an illegal war of aggression. (The U.S. and its allies prosecuted defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunal for aggressive war, an international crime. 

United Nations image

The Anderson Administration will respect the UN Charter and international law, and cease aid and assistance to countries that do not.

• Moral leadership: We will no longer support regimes that abuse human rights and suppress democracy. 

• Economic rationality: We will close down all overseas military bases that are not demonstrably critical to our security, along with at least a 50 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget. (The U.S. military budget is now larger than the military budgets in all other nations combined.)  

This money will be allocated to domestic priorities, including reducing the accumulated debt and interest burden. As Martin Luther King said, every dollar spent on a missile is a dollar taken from a child’s education, or the food budget of a poor family.”

Sources and notes

“Rocky Anderson’s Foreign Policy The Challenge,” http://www.voterocky.org/foreign_policy_policy

Nürnberg

The Nürnberg (also spelled Nuremberg) trials were a series of trials held in Nürnberg, Germany (1945–1946) in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.

The indictment lodged against them contained four counts:

(1) Crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements),

(2) Crimes against humanity (that is, exterminations, deportations, and genocide),

(3) War crimes (that is, violations of the laws of war), and

(4) ‘A common plan or conspiracy to commit’ the criminal acts listed in the first three counts.

The authority of the International Military Tribunal to conduct these trials stemmed from the London Agreement of August 8, 1945. On that date, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France signed an agreement that included a charter for an international military tribunal to conduct trials of major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic location. Later, 19 other nations accepted the provisions of this agreement. [Britannica note]

Each of the four countries provided one judge and an alternate, as well as a prosecutor.

Nuremberg Judges

Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet main)

 Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Volchkov (Soviet alternate)

 Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (British main), President of the Tribunal

 Sir Norman Birkett (British alternate)

 Francis Biddle (American main)

 John J. Parker (American alternate)

 Professor Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (French main)

 Robert Falco (French alternate)

 Chief prosecutors

 Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross (United Kingdom)

 Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (United States)

 Lieutenant-General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko (Soviet Union)

 François de Menthon (France) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

  

See also

“An End to Authoritarianism and Plutocracy in the United States: Let us consider the fundamental guiding principles for the United States of America — freedom, equal opportunity, compassion, and security (It’s up to us, says Ross C. (Rocky) Anderson, Hinckley Institute of Politics, March 26, 2012, http://www.voterocky.org/an_end_to_authoritarianism

http://www.voterocky.org/no_war_on_iran

Images

The October 1, 1946 Süddeutsche Zeitung announces "The Verdict in Nuremberg." Depicted are (left, from top): Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick; (second column) Funk, Streicher, Schacht; (third column) Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach; (right, from top) Sauckel, Jodl, Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann. Image from Topography of Terror Museum, Berlin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

The Nuremberg judges, left to right: John Parker, Francis Biddle, Alexander Volchkov, Iona Nikitchenko, Geoffrey Lawrence, Norman Birkett

Book cover: Ann Tusa (with John Tusa), London, Cambridge University, is author of The Nuremberg Trial and The Berlin Airlift

http://open.salon.com/blog/markinjapan/2012/02/14/no_police_state_no_war_criminals

The War Crimes of Eisenhower and ZOG/USA, incogman.net

A Malaysian tribunal has found former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of committing crimes against humanity during the Iraq war, Press TV reported. http://presstv.com/detail/211548.html

http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/peacesecurity/

“U.S. President Barack Obama has approved a new policy which allows the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/238263.html

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