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Kathy Stone, W A M M
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Ferencz, 86, would know. He was the chief prosecutor for the United States in the Nuremberg war crimes trial against Nazi extermination squads, part of the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46. Ferencz was already a Harvard Law School graduate when he enlisted in 1943, served in every major campaign under General Patton, and then participated in the liberation of the concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau. Shortly after he was discharged in 1945 he was recruited to help establish the war crimes trials.
Today he is an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University and is founder of the Pace Peace Center. He lives in New Rochelle, New York, with his wife, Gertrude. He's authored or co-authored numerous books on international law, and in 1988 wrote PlanetHood with Ken Keyes, Jr. PlanetHood, with more than 450,000 copies in print, is a practical guide for average citizens interested in supporting international law and U.N. reform. He also speaks frequently on global peace and continues to mobilize support for U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Ferencz has devoted his life's work to preventing crimes against humanity such as he witnessed while liberating the camps. Should that injustice occur again, he wants those responsible held accountable. “Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes I witnessed while liberating these centers of death and destruction…Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget…”
In the December 2005 UN Chronicle he wrote, “Aggression, according to the Nuremberg judges and other precedents, is "the supreme international crime" since it includes all the other crimes. There can be no war without atrocities and unauthorized warfare in violation of the UN Charter is the biggest atrocity of all. The best way to protect the lives of courageous young people who serve in the military is to avoid war-making itself. One cannot kill an idea with a gun but only with a better idea. If people believe that law is better than war they must do all they can to enhance the power of law and stop glorifying war.”
Ferencz was only 27 when he served as chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, convicting 22 defendants charged with murdering over l million people. It was his first case.
Given that the United States cooperated with the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France in establishing the International Military Tribunal in 1945 to bring justice to the aggressors of war crimes, it's sadly ironic that a new crop of U.S. leaders have eluded participation in the ICC, which was an outgrowth of the war crimes trials.
In another recent article, Heed the Lesson of Nuremberg: Let No Nation Be Above the Law, Ferencz writes, “The Bush Administration, backed by the Republican-led Congress, has boycotted the new court and done everything possible to destroy its power. Opponents of the ICC allege that its prosecutors may subject American servicemen to politically motivated charges that would inhibit foreign intervention
for humanitarian purposes. Yet no other country in the world has raised this objection.”
After decades of work, 120 countries had voted to accept the statutes of a permanent ICC in 1998. The United States was not among them. Finally in late 2000, and without the Senate's ratification, President Clinton directed U.N. Ambassador David Scheffer to sign the treaty. The action was quickly nullified by the Bush Administration.
The Bush Administration has exhibited disregard for international law and its own Constitution in a mounting number of instances: elective war based on “faulty” intelligence, torture, extraordinary extradition, holding prisoners without just cause and without access to representation; and more recently warrantless domestic spying. Are these not crimes against humanity?
“Jingoistic slogans about protecting national sovereignty may sound appealing to an uninformed public, but try as the current administration might, it cannot eliminate the need for certain universally binding rules of humanitarian law in an increasingly interdependent world.”
The world, minus the United States and Israel, moved forward and ratified the Rome Treaty establishing the ICC in 2002. Ferencz continues to work for the United States' joining the ICC.
But it doesn't end there.
While a corrupt White House and divided Congress have been grandstanding for years on war funding and talk in sound bites about “what is best for Iraq,” an international citizen's tribunal has amassed charges, evidence and testimony. The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration delivered indictments to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sanchez, Miller, Gonzales and others on January 10, and invited them to present their defense on January 20-22 at Columbia University Law School and Riverside Church in New York. (See: www.bushcommission.org)
When Congress and the ICC eventually, as they must, come around to exploring the Bush Administrations' war crimes, they'll find much of the groundwork has been laid. |
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© 2006 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete February 2006 Index - click here
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