SF Examiner: America's war criminals

[Say_What]

Check out the LONG list of Kissinger atrocties. He's now wanted in three countries.

<clips>

When Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia, appears before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague, he ought not stand alone. General Wesley Clark (retired), commander of the NATO air war against Serbia, should be up there with him. And since there is no statute of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity, it would seem in order to bring former Senator Bob Kerrey and Henry Kissinger to the docket as well.

The first of these defendants will probably stand trial. The next three will be unlikely ever to see the inside of an international court of justice, but all have almost certainly violated the 1949 Geneva Convention. And in Clark and Kerrey's case, the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. As for Kissinger, the rap sheet is as long as your arm and the butcher bill almost beyond reckoning.

Let's start with Clark. The Geneva Convention prohibits bombing that is not clearly justified by military necessity, and the protocols specifically bar targets that have a civilian function. But NATO aircraft bombed railway stations, bridges, power stations, communication networks, factories, petrochemical refineries, warehouses, sewage and water-treatment plants, hospitals and schools, killing almost 2,000 civilians in the 78-day bombing campaign. In the words of Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Study, "The NATO bombing violated specific rules of war. Our government has committed war crimes by bombing civilian infrastructures."

This past April, U.S. troops helped arrest Dragan Obrenovic, the Bosnian Serb commander of the brutal assault on Srebrenica in July 1995, and hauled him to The Hague for trail. The White House said the arrest was an "essential step in consolidating the peace and promoting the rule of law in Bosnia." Agreed. Now let's put Clark alongside him.

http://www.examiner.com/opinion/default.jsp?story=OPhallinan0706w

[Zuni]

1. I disagree about Clark

Military campaigns are not clean affairs. They are messy and dirty and sometimes things like railroads, power plants and things need to be taken out to weaken the enemy. Maximum force used limits the length of the war and the amount of victims, which is always worse in a longer campaign.
Bridges, Railroads, Industry, Power Plants all have military uses. To strangle the Serbian ability to resist, these must be taken out.
2,000 Civilians (in an almost 3 month war) is not a lot at all by historical standards. 17,000 Serb Civilians were killed when the Nazis bombed Belgrade in 1941.
Clarks campaign clearly minimized civilian casualties in what was a very brutal conflict.

Now I FULLY agree about Kissinger. Read "Sideshow" By William Shawcross or Hitchen's book for Henry's crimes

[mike_c]

3. rationalize it any way you wish, but...

...it's still illegal, and Clark should still be tried liable for war crimes. You realize that your rationalization, "military campaigns are not clean affairs," could be used to excuse just about any violations of the Geneva Conventions, the rules of land warfare, etc. Well sure, attacking civilian targets "weakened the enemy." One might make the same argument about the fire bombing of Dresden, or the rape of Shanghai. The stamp of a professional soldier is his ability to conduct himself honorably DESPITE the uncleanliness of battle.

[Vitruvius]

10. I agree with you re Clark; when you can destroy property instead of

killing people -- even enemy soldiers -- destroying the property and sparing the people is the thing to do. And that's what Clark did when it was possible.

Yes, destroying civilian property is often illegal under international law. But people -- even enemy soldiers -- come ahead of property. And if the law says no, then the law be damned.

General Sherman understood this, and has been vilified ever since. Sherman's march thru Georgia killed few Southerners, and the Union casualties were relatively light -- while at the same time Lee and Grant were feeding their men into the meat grinder. The march thru Georgia destroyed the South's ability to resist, broke the deadlock between Lee's and Grant's armies, and ended the butchery.

Yet Lee and Grant are remembered with respect -- North and South. While Sherman, who destroyed a lot of property and few people, has never been forgiven. As the historian Victor Hanson remarks: "The Southern public put that aside and hated Sherman with a fury that it had never shown Grant, the devourer of Southern manhood -- thus confirming Machiavelli's dictum that 'men more quickly forget the death of their fathers than the loss of their patrimonies.'"

I think well of Sherman, and I think well of Clark. And I hope that Kissinger, who specialized in having people killed, gets his just deserts one day.

Vitruvius

P.S: Vested interest disclosure: my great grandfather was in Sherman's army.

[0007]

2. I'm amazed that Kissinger is still alive.

.....and the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is less than scum of the world.

And junior appointed Kissinger to head the investigation of 911, the flack forced him to resign.

[treepig]

9. only the good die young

.

[DemoTex]

4. The Great Liar, Henry K., was in Dallas yesterday.

It was a real hush-hush visit. He spoke to a group of corporate travel department executives and travel industry executives. I heard about it on NPR-affiliate KERA late yesterday afternoon.

[democracyindanger]

5. Green Party broadside

This isn't an article denouncing Kissinger. This is a simple effort by a Nader supporter to dent Clark's probable campaign (the author was a signatory on a letter giving full support to Nader's 2000 candidacy, available at http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/01/letters/print.html which bangs the tired 'there's no difference between the two parties' drum.)

The timing for this subject matter is unusual. Milosevic has been at the Hague for a while, so it's not in response to some new development in his war crimes trial. Kerrey owned up years ago. Kissinger is, truly, a sumbitch and has been for decades. Clark is the only one currently in the spotlight. Milosevic was used to put Clark in the company of a widely accepted war criminal, Kissinger to show that Americans do commit war crimes, and Kerrey--well, I wouldn't be surprised if Kerrey was tossed in in the hopes of confusing him with John Kerry. Hey, two presidential candidates with one stone.

And yeah, "railway stations, bridges, power stations, communication networks, factories, petrochemical refineries, warehouses" wouldn't have any military use. Furthermore, if Hallinan was really interested in bringing war criminals to justice, why not do a piece on the much clearer, much more recent case of the US tank killing the journalists in Baghdad? Wait--I know--it's because the Americans involved in that aren't standing in the way of St. Ralph's delusions.

Naderites. Bah.

[Zuni]

8. I am sick of the

Naderites and Greens doing these attacks on people who might be able to beat Bush.
They might not be perfect for Green eco-socialist standards, but they are a vast improvement over Bush.

[teryang]

6. Interesting article

I can't get the link to work so I don't have the full story. In any event, I've had specialized training in this area and the only off limits targets mentioned re: Clark (in the snips) are these:

"sewage and water-treatment plants, hospitals and schools" If such facilities are being occupied or used by combatants they lose their protected status. How are these documented? I seem to recall that at least one hospital was bombed alleged to have been by accident.

[Zuni]

7. Clark

hit buildings and structures with the intent of breaking the serb military.
As far as I know, many of the worst incidents, like firing on refugees, the Chinese Embassy and some other notorious incidents were by pilot error or by Intel error and happened not because of Clark.
Clark should only be blaimed if he himself planned missions to attack civilians--which is what was done in Dresden or Tokyo or in Nanking or in Srebenecia. RAF MArshal Arthur Harris planned his raids on Germany as terror raids, not as attacks on enenmy facilities that helped support war effort.

[teryang]

11. I agree

I don't think Clark would deliberately attack the Chinese embassy but I believe other parties wanted to.