Imagine All The People

Living life in peace...

Imagine how much suffering might have been avoided if George W. Bush and the other engineers and enablers of the invasion of Iraq had been aware that severe personal consequences would await those who start the killing.

Unfortunately, the likelihood that any of these people will ever face trial for their crimes seems inversely proportional to the enormous potential for positive change such trials would represent.

But holding aggressors personally responsible for aggression would fulfill the vision of the post-World War II Nuremberg Charter, a landmark document for which the United States, ironically, is largely responsible.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who represented the United States at the Nuremberg Tribunal, stated that the intent of holding powerful Nazis responsible was not just victor’s revenge but a desire to establish a precedent against aggressive war.

“Let me make clear,” Jackson said, “that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.”

Jackson added, “This trial represents mankind’s desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world’s peace and to commit aggression against the rights of their neighbors.”

Ending the war in Iraq in a truly responsible way would uphold Jackson’s principle and could result in a significant step toward the ultimate goal of the United Nations and all men and women of good will: a world without war.

That really would be change we can believe in.