Yes, but we haven’t exactly set the same precedent for our own war criminals. I had hoped that Obama would’ve had more courage but a lot of people convinced him to make the wrong call.
For subordinates who executed the illegal actions. Within the command structure. Being in the command structure was important.
We did this for practical reasons. In Iraq, we fired the Ba’athist civilian state along with its military. So not only was the successor left without its bureaucracy, said bureaucracy was also unemployed. Ripe for the taking.
Legally, focussing on the originator and executor of an order is cleaner. It’s stark in a way involving every interlocutor isn’t.
> For subordinates who executed the illegal actions. Within the command structure. Being in the command structure was important.
For a fairly comparable role (foreign minister), Joachim von Ribbentrop was convicted (among other things, for "crimes against peace" and "deliberately planning a war of aggression") and executed at Nuremberg. Plenty of ministers in the list there.
It's hard to argue Kissinger wasn't involved in "deliberately planning a war of aggression" against Cambodia.
This is fair. Were America to find itself at the mercy of a foreign power, he would likely have been prosecuted. That said—and I’m not a Hague expert, so please take this with the grain of salt an internet discussion should carry—the intent of Nuremberg was a balance of practicality and precision, on one hand, with deterrence and retribution, on the other hand.
Yes, but we haven’t exactly set the same precedent for our own war criminals. I had hoped that Obama would’ve had more courage but a lot of people convinced him to make the wrong call.
> wasn't a winning argument at Nuremberg
For subordinates who executed the illegal actions. Within the command structure. Being in the command structure was important.
We did this for practical reasons. In Iraq, we fired the Ba’athist civilian state along with its military. So not only was the successor left without its bureaucracy, said bureaucracy was also unemployed. Ripe for the taking.
Legally, focussing on the originator and executor of an order is cleaner. It’s stark in a way involving every interlocutor isn’t.
> For subordinates who executed the illegal actions. Within the command structure. Being in the command structure was important.
For a fairly comparable role (foreign minister), Joachim von Ribbentrop was convicted (among other things, for "crimes against peace" and "deliberately planning a war of aggression") and executed at Nuremberg. Plenty of ministers in the list there.
It's hard to argue Kissinger wasn't involved in "deliberately planning a war of aggression" against Cambodia.
This is fair. Were America to find itself at the mercy of a foreign power, he would likely have been prosecuted. That said—and I’m not a Hague expert, so please take this with the grain of salt an internet discussion should carry—the intent of Nuremberg was a balance of practicality and precision, on one hand, with deterrence and retribution, on the other hand.