War Criminals ?

The picture above is of the defendants in one of the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg after World War II.   The defendants were Nazis and their crimes were horrendous.   There is no doubt that they deserved to be tried for their crimes against humanity.

But their convictions and sentences did not end the legacy of war crimes.   Patriotism, religion, war, and a misguided sense of right and wrong combine too easily to convince a person in power that the end can justify the means.   We still see war crimes being committed all over the world and the people who commit them all believe they were justified in doing so.

Fortunately, there are decent people in the world who abhor these crimes and work diligently to see the perpetrators brought to justice.   USA Today has just printed an article on the efforts being made by the United States government to flush out and prosecute these war criminals who are hiding in this country.   In 1979 the U.S. Department of Justice created the Office of Special Investigations to root out Nazis hiding in this country.   This year that office was morphed into the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Unit, and its scope was broadened to include war criminals in many other countries and in current times.

I have no problem with our government doing this.   In fact, I think it's a good thing.   War criminals need to be rooted out and prosecuted no matter where their crimes were committed or where they are hiding.   The problem is that we only seek out the war criminals from other countries and make excuses for our own war criminals.

It seems to be easy for Americans to see and identify war criminals from other countries, but we are totally blind to the war crimes committed by Americans.   There is always a "justifiable" reason for an American committing a war crime -- at least that is what most Americans can easily convince themselves of.   We don't want to admit that Americans can be as ruthless, vicious and mean as people from any other country.   No country is immune from producing war criminals.

Didn't this country just have a president and vice-president who invaded another country, killing hundreds of thousands of people, even though that country presented no danger to the United States or its citizens -- a war started either for our leader's personal pride or his desire to access foreign oil reserves (neither of which justify the killing of other humans)?

Didn't these same leaders of the U.S. authorize the imprisonment of people for whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing for years in cages on foreign soil and deny them the right to a fair trial?

Didn't these same leaders authorize the use of torture on thousands of people, justifying it because they were the "enemy" (which is against the law of every civilized country, including our own)?

Whether the people of America (and its current leaders) want to admit it or not, these are war crimes.   And they are crimes that should be punished.   Instead, we have chosen to ignore these crimes and protect the perpetrators.

What gives us the moral authority to punish the war criminals in other countries when we protect those who are American?   It is an indefensible position.   Until we arrest and try George Bush and Dick Cheney for their heinous crimes, we are being hypocrites.   Being American, even an important American, does not justify criminal behavior.