Reg Jones wrote to the BBC regarding this link: “War crimes – have we learned anything?” and copied us in. He wrote:
Classic BBC worldview regarding war crimes:
“… Buchenwald last week, Belsen this, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki still to come in August.”
Why didn’t Mr. Simpson have the courage to follow up and explain just how the men responsible for dropping the A-bomb ie Truman, Stimson, and Oppenheimer escaped war crimes trials at the end of World War II. Was it victor’s justice Mr. Simpson or was there a slight distinction to be made between Buchenwald and Hiroshima?
If you’re going to raise Hirsohima in the context of war crimes at least have the courage to follow through. Since no distinction was made we are left with the BBC’s World Affiars editor’s cheap insinuation that there is no real moral/criminal distinction to be made between a Hiroshima –which arguably saved both American and Japanese lives– and Buchenwald.
How nice.
But let us not stop there:
“Haven’t we learned anything? Are we no further forward than we were 60 years ago?…But we haven’t yet managed to persuade those who think they can slaughter people as a matter of policy that they will inevitably pay a price for doing so. True, there is justice sometimes…”
Speaking of “justice sometimes”… did anyone notice Mr. Simpson omission. I know it was a very obscure news story. There was recently a war. The country had a bit of a genocide problem in the past. The leader of the country was not such a nice man. He is in jail now. He and his henchmen will be facing justice.
This country now has the chance to say “Never Again!” and mean it.
Strange that the BBC World Affairs Editor doesn’t mention this. No, on second thought it’s not so strange.
In his email to me he also asks whether Mr. Simpson was a supporter of “enthusiastic action” with regard to Iraq?
I can’t immediately answer that question when it comes to Mr Simpson as an individual. He seems to me typical of the old BBC in both its faults and virtues. Let’s put it this way, we might not care for his views, but he is by no means a favourite of the anti-war left either. I do remember him being joyfully enthusiastic about the liberation of Kabul and they hated him for that. Continuing my partial defence (note to our esteemed commentariat: partial defences where appropriate are necessary if one is to gain assent when attack is appropriate) of Mr Simpson, the headline referring to war crimes was almost certainly written by a sub-editor, not him. His actual words refer only to “past horrors” and “killing on an industrial scale,” and that first paragraph could be read as general introductory hand-wringing over the horrors of war.
OK, end of partial defence. The very significant ommission of recent events in Iraq in a discussion about making dictators and war criminals “pay a price” was unimpressive to the point of black comedy.
Come on guys and gals, get posting, I know you all watched Dr Who. We all heard about the aliens’ plot to start WWIII by taking over the UK government and launching nukes against a bogus enemy with bogus WMD that could be launched within 45 secs. Is this anti-war biased or what? (and it’s got Andrew Marr in it!)
The UK has nukes?
Sorry about that, I know you do, (dispite all the protests against ours). But would a nuclear attack by the UK upon an unnamed ‘enemy’ bogus or otherwise really start WWIII?
I mean a nuclear exchange between the US and the late, unlamented USSR would undoubtedly triggered such a war because the whole planet was basically aligned with one or the other.
However the Soviet Union is history and the UK is allied to the only remaining superpower. If this ‘bogus’ enemy doesn’t really have WMDs than they cannot retaliate in kind. And If said ‘bogus’ enemy is who we think they are their ‘allies’ aren’t nuclear either and have to date lost every war they’ve launched against a Western foe.
In short a nuclear attack by the UK while (possibly) regrettable would be most unlikely to lead to a massive, destructive third world war – however much certain folks would like it too.
PS: Now I know why my predominantly liberal Doctor Who fan club thinks this is the best of the new Doctor’s adventures to date! 😉
Speaking of the Guardians of Gallifrey, (my club) one of our members annoyed me terribly tonight on the way home from our monthly meeting by claiming the new Pope was unpopular with Germans because of his ‘Nazi’ past. When I pointed out he was a teenaged boy and drafted my clubmate insisted that forty percent of Germans fled the country to avoid being used by the Nazi war machine.
Ha.
Talk about your revisionism! Leaving aside the idiocy of expecting a teenage boy to go on the run alone and unaided I don’t believe for a minute that such a high percentage of the German population did anything of the kind.
The unpleasant fact is the majority of Germans supported Hitler – which is how he got into power in the first place let us not forget! And a truly appalling percentage took part in assorted war crimes and crimes against Humanity. For example how many ordinary German families had a slave servant from one of the occupied countries?
I do not dispute in any way that Blair & Nato have also engaged in such crimes against humanity or that the BBC have knowingly & deliberately censored almost all mention of them.
Neil Craig:
Neil here is accusing the BBC of covering up for Tony Blair. Now if someone with some brains and common sense, (no Neil, not you) can explain to me, why the BBC would do such a thing, seeing their staunch opposition against the Iraq war.
In fact, the BBC went so far as to actually “out” a source, David Kelly, Remember him Neil, he slashed his own wrists and bled himself to death. Turns out the BBC took what David Kelly said, twisted it so bad, that now it was nothing but a bunch lies, which they then “reported” as, a SEXED UP document, supposely used as justification to go war. Nothing but lies accusing Tony Blair of whatever.
But according to Neil, the BBC and Tony Blair are “good buddies” covering up for each other. After reading your post Neil, just one question? Does your chair actually float a couple of inches off the floor? You need to come back to the real world.
Verity
If there is no international law then Nuremberg trials never happened, the Holocaust was fine, the Milosevic trial is a fake (well ok it is but not for the same reason), bin Laden did nothing wrong & every senior UK politician of the last 60 years is totally dishonest. Our country has signed up to these laws & indeed hung people on that basis. If you really believe this then surely there are people you should criticise before me?
Archangel
Do you actually dispute anything I said as being factually untrue or are you merely saying it is outrageous to say it?
The BBC have lied & censored over a period of 15 years to help various Nazis publically committed to genocide – that is a simple statement of fact.
As to why a government broadcaster would ever censor to support government propaganda – Gosh that is a tough one.
Neil C… “The BBC have lied & censored over a period of 15 years to help various Nazis publically committed to genocide – that is a simple statement of fact. ”
If you believe what you just said, then you must agree with all of us here that the Beeb has simply GOT to GO.
That the Beeb has to go is the only thing you and I agree on.
Where to start?
Neil, the obvious wrongness of a given situation does not necessarily depend on their being a precise law in effect to cover it. To expect that would be to expect the human race to be perfect, to have already prefectly created all laws needed to cover any contengency that might come up at a future date.
That is obvious nonsense. That is a totally unreasonable expectation.
We don’t have to have had a law against deliberate extinction of civilian non-combatants to know that the Holocaust was WRONG.
Civilian casualties in a war are to be expected. This is the reason war is the last choice. But at some point you have to stand up and fight. If you CAN take action and don’t, the blood on the hands of the dictators who destroy life is also on YOUR hands.
I have a Japanese friend whose parents were adults during the war in Imperial Japan. They have told me that the Empire had them all so totally brainwashed against the Allied forces that if we had invaded Japan, they would have fought down to the last man, woman, and child from sheer terror of the Boogyman Enemy the Empire created. Millions would have preferred suicide to surrendering, so great was their fear.
The upshot is that, completely aside from saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers and millions of Pacific Islanders by cutting the war short, Nagasaki and Hiroshima saved the lives of millions of Japanese citizens, as well.
Neil Craig
The Nuremburg Trials were actually Military Tribunals, created by joint agreement between the US, British, French and Soviet governments. They were created on the basis of these states’ criminal jurisdiction and were in effect the joint exercise of individual jurisdiction. This pribniple is still at work today. No international law existed then and none exists now.
Mamapyjamas
I also agree with you on “the obvious wrongness of a given situation does not necessarily depend on their being a precise law in effect to cover it” if you recheck my 23.04.05 – 9:37 pm post you will see that I accept the laws can sometimes be broken but that it is wrong to do so lightly or for an otherwise bad reason (helping the openly genocidal KLA is in principle, tho’ not numerically, as evil as the Holocaust).
(There is evidence that the Japanese were trying to surrender before Hiroshima & I would debate that with you elsewhere but it would be to far off topic here)
Pete is just wrong here – the allies did claim to be carrying out a trial under international law indeed the charges they laid such as planning an aggressive war is not something which falls under the normal criminal jurisdiction of national laws.
My position is that International Law exists, granted in a fairly dubious & often unenforceable manner, & has done since at least the medieval Popes. Even more importantly that living in an ever smaller world we need some rules under which nations can live. The best justification for the Falklands War, which I supported, was that if Argentina got away with blatant aggression every country with powerful neighbours (ie all of them) would fear the same.
Possibly even more important than the killing, the dreadful effect of the war against Yugoslavia & to a lesser extent, Iraq is that people like Peter, Verity & national leaders now say that such law retroactively never existed.
Just as Britain is a more dangerous place because the government broadcaster has got away with lying & encouraging genocide, the world is a more dangerous place because there are no accepted rules to keep the peace.
Neil, there have *never* been any accepted international rules for keeping the peace. And if there were the enforcers of same, (UN, World Court, whoever) would be much more interested in making life difficult for the United States and Israel than prosecuting actual dictators and murderers.
Neil
I’m not in the habit of playing tennis on these thigs so we’ll simply disagree on the existence or otherwise of cross-border law. But you are wrong.
Your justification for the Falklands War was a deneficial side effect but the actual, justified reason and indeed the casus belli is that a foreign nation had invaded sovereign British territory and had to be ejected.
I don’t retroactively claim there is no such thing as internation law, I have always known it is the case. Setting aside the point that you have a bee in your bonnet over the Kosovan war, I agree with many of your points on it. Many of the criticisms of the Iraq War can be aimed fairly at Clinton’s War; there was no UN sanction, where ARE the bodies? the KLA is indeed desicable terror/gangster organisation. By this I’m not saying it wasn’t justified, I’m merely noting that many of the critics of Bush were singing long and loud in support of Clinton before performing an about turn on their principles over Iraq.
Pete
I take your tennis metaphor & will make this my last word on this thread.
I can’t dispute having a bee in my bonnet re Kosovo compared to normal reporting. The corollary of that is that normal reportingnot which fails to report on the ongoing acts of genocide & ethnic cleansing & indeed the failure to find the mass graves (apart from KLA ones) which you mention. I regard the wars against Yugoslavia as vastly more important than Iraq. Yugoslavia was a developed country which had declined to produce nukes, Iraq is a 3rd world country with oil: The Yugoslav wars caused the deaths of several hundred thousand civilians, the driving from their homes of 2.5 million, & the permanent change in Europe’s map, Iraq moved from a dictatorship whose leader came to power with US help to, I strongly suspect, ultimately something very similar: Yugoslavia proved the destruction (or nonexistence) of the rule of law & that no treaty or promise by any Nato leader could, ever, be trusted (which makes North Korea an intractible problem), Iraq is at most a footnote to this. If my assessment is correct then the airbrushing of Kosovo from the news is a major threat to us all & I am correct to consider it important. If it is merely that the government knowingly went to war to assist in genocide that is also worth treating seriously.
Roxana
there have been & are such rules. By adhering to the UN charter we undertook to accept that aggressive war, with the sole exception of war to stop genocide (but not to commit it as in Kosovo) was criminal. The same applies to Nuremberg & indeed their are precedents going back to the middle ages. A society cannot exist without rules (ie laws)- your & other comments demonstrate clearly exactly how dangerous we have made the world.