During judgment in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals the following statement was made: “To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” The US participated in these trials and its team was lead by judge Robert Jackson. It is he, who in his summation said “… Von Ribbentrop admits the use of the “diplomatic lie.” Keitel advised that the facts of rearmament be kept secret so that they could be denied at Geneva. Raeder deceived about rebuilding the German Navy in violation of Versailles. Goring urged Ribbentrop to tell a “legal lie” to the British Foreign Office …..”
Can we neglect to investigate the “diplomatic lie” of the “legal lie” preceding the Iraq War? Should we neglect to make criminal enquiry into this incidence just because the perpetrators of this alleged crimes are the United States of America and the United Kingdom? Does not this hypocrisy make a mockery of whatever so-called International justice we undertook up to now? Does it not render the execution of Nazi criminals, Sadam Hussein and others as unadulterated murder of the vanquished?
In regard to the value of these proceedings we again wish to refer to what Robert Jackson said in his final summation: “I personally regard the conviction and sentence of individuals as of secondary importance compared with the significance of the commitments of the four nations to the proposition that wars of aggression are criminal and that persecution of conquered minorities on racial, religious or political grounds is likewise criminal.” This today equally applies to the participation of the global community in these proceedings.
Finally I refer to the closing argument by US Judge Jackson in a Nuremburg trial:
“It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain. But dead they are…” If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime”.
J.C.Grobler, Administrator.
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