The war drums are beating for North Korea, as Donald Trump put it in a Tweet (of all things), “North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”
Following WWII, 12 of 24 high ranking Germans were hung for:
Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
War crimes
Crimes against humanity
A war of aggression is a war conducted without the justification of self defence. As the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg following WWII put it, “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, 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.”
Since WWII this standard has all but been forgotten and it has become almost facile to even mention it. The American government has become the primary global aggressor. According to Global Research – The Centre for Research on Globalization, the “US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II”.
No amount of propaganda or jingoistic patriotism can hide the reality of the illegal aggressive nature of modern warfare if we allow ourselves the time to think, even for a moment, something that the propaganda is specifically aimed to discourage and suppress.
George Bush sold the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on bringing democracy to the Middle East, fourteen years later and with no democracy in sight, the war continues and the people are still dying.
It might be good to pause and wonder why no one is taking on Saudi Arabia, one of the most undemocratic and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, recently visited by Theresa May for a cosy ‘trade’ mission. Couldn’t they use a bit of democracy, western style?
As I write, Trump is very proud to have dropped ‘the mother of all bombs’ (MOAB – Massive Ordnance Air Blast) (‘What it does is basically suck out all of the oxygen and lights the air on fire’ – Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies) on Afghanistan. I am sure the hearts of mothers across the world will share his pride in his new found toys, or perhaps his own mother might wish she’d never spawned him.
As a US naval strike group heads for the Korean Peninsula, officials in North Korea, Pyongyang, have warned that the “current grim situation” justified its “self-defensive and pre-emptive strike capabilities with the nuclear force at the core.”
As ever, whatever the US beef with North Korea, it is a beef with the top, headed by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. It is extremely unlikely we’ll see another Saddam takedown. It is the down trodden people of North Korea, their homes, towns and cities, and their lives, that will be ripped apart and turned to rubble and radioactive dead meat.
Trump is heading the world towards its first nuclear war and, once again, the many will pay the price for the grasping, greedy, power hungry few, who sit safe in their halls and bunkers of power.
Remember Nuremberg, lest we truly do forget. “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, 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.”
Criminals in power are still just criminals, and it is we, the people, who always, always, pay for their crimes and the penalty for their crimes.
KOG. 19 April 2017
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/851767718248361986
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_the_Middle_East
