Obama Embraces Nazi Nurermberg Trials Logic: "They Were Only Following Orders"

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Apr 18, 2009 at 09:00


Obama:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

From Wikipedia on the Nuremberg Principles:

The Nuremberg Principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by necessity during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II....

The Principles

Principle I

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

    See also: Nuremberg Defense and Superior Orders....

More precisely, Principle IV was specifically embodied in Article 8 of London Charter of the International Military Tribunal At Nurmberg, the same charter which clearly encompasses the crimes that Obama now wishes to sweep under the rug:
Paul Rosenberg :: Obama Embraces Nazi Nurermberg Trials Logic: "They Were Only Following Orders"
II. JURISDICTION AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Article 6. The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to in Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes.

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;

The invasion of Iraq was demonstrably a crime against peace.  It was both a war of aggression and a war in violation of international treaties--to wit, the UN Charter. The Downing Street Memos clearly demonstrate that the Bush Administration was determined to invade Iraq, and was merely trying to figure out the best way to justify this aggression.

(b) WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

The treatment of prisoners in the "war on terror" was clearly a war crime, whether one argues that those suffering ill-treatment were prisoners of war, or not.  For if they were not prisoners of war, then they were civilians, who were similarly protected.

(c) CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Article 7. The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.

Thus Bush, Cheney and all top Administration officials are culpable under the Nuremberg Principles.

Article 8. The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.

Thus all those "only following orders" are also culpable.

Despite this clear statement of principle, there were Nazi defendents who nonetheless tried to argue that they were "only following orders," which in fact came to be known as the "Nuremberg Defense".  It was not accepted.

But now, Obama thinks the Nazis were right, after all.  Movement conservatives have always thought so, of course.  But this is the first time that a Democratic President has agreed with them, in flagrant opposition to the rule of law.

So, score one for Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and all their wingnuts legions.  Obama may not be Hitler, but he agrees completely with Hitler's underlings, and he thinks that the Nuremberg prosecutors, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill were all dead wrong.

If this isn't evil, it will just have to do 'til the real thing comes along.

So much for the battle to save Western Civilization.  We have just surrendered.  Though not in the way that the wingnuts think.

After all, they are the ones we have surrendered to.

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Obama Embraces Nazi Nurermberg Trials Logic: "They Were Only Following Orders" | 41 comments
Demand a criminal investigation (4.00 / 4)
Personally, I'd tend to link to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed, of course by the radical liberal president... Ronald Reagan (sarcasm intended).

Or one could point to the Geneva Conventions, or the 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I have no idea why anyone is pretending that some of this may not have been illegal. The only questions are who, how much, and when.

Best action I'm aware of: Link to ACLU action.

Let me know if you make/know of others.

More On That To Come (4.00 / 1)
I didn't want to clutter this post up, but yes, of course, there's a much larger body of law that this is a part of.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Missing principle (4.00 / 4)
Your source leaves out the most fundamental principle:

Principle 0: The victor gets to make the rules.

So Nuremberg principles only apply to the losers. The US has committed atrocities in every war that it has ever participated in. Depending on how far back you want to go, we could examine the treatment of the Indians, prisoners in the Civil War, the Spanish-American war and the capture of the Philippines.

Or if you prefer, starting with the period of Nuremberg itself:

The detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII and the expropriation of their property. The murder of captured Japanese and German soldiers on the battle field. And, of course, the biggest single crime of all time the dropping of the A bombs.

I don't know the particulars of the Korean War, so I'll not cite any explicit examples.

Then there were the actions committed in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Support for death squads in South and Central America and elsewhere as part of the cold war.

And now the ongoing violations in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It's not just the un-prosecuted (and unreported) crimes, it is the hypocrisy that is so damaging to the US's standing in the world. You can lie to the Americans about what the predator drone (what a friendly name that is) hit, but those on the ground know the truth.

When a society has to lie to its citizens you know that it is on its way to collapse. One has only to read up on the cynicism of the population during the Stalin and Hitler eras to see examples. Once the population looses confidence governments have to resort to intimidation and force.

An enslaved population is not inclined to work hard. During the worst of Stalin's regime small family plots provided over half of the food stuffs while the huge collective farms produced little. The same people who worked hard on their own plots (and sold output for cash) loafed when forced to work for the state.

We already have the makings of a nice police state in place with the world's largest prison system and a new expansion underway to hold "illegal immigrants". Recent revelations about the NSA show that government surveillance is proceeding along the usual lines of authoritarian regimes as well.

Once there is a secret police force in place there is no way to stop it. If a leader orders it discontinued how would he be able to verify that his demands have been met? The same people doing the spying are reporting back.  

Policies not Politics

It's One Thing To Betray Our Principles, Another To Renounce Them (4.00 / 8)
The thing about betraying our principles is that there was always a fight, and always a hope that the betrayals would be repudiated, and principles would be re-affirmed.

There was also the stubborn fact that upholding those principles was a source of enormous soft power--it was the real reason, after all, that we finally won the Cold War.

But now, just when folks had hoped that Obama would represent such a deeply-needed re-affirmation, Obama has turned around and done just the opposite.

It's not just a betrayal of principle, it's an incredibly stupid thing to do, from a pragmatic POV.

If we want to win against international terrorism, the best possible thing we could do would be to hold ourselves responsible, and put people on trial for mistreating enemy prisoners this way.

Obama's just thrown away the ace of trumps.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Obama has also renounced any claim to being remotely credible (4.00 / 3)
And thus, as this realization percolates around the world, through it's various governments, the US will once again be viewed as a pariah state that simply cannot be trusted to obey any law or principle that isn't completely self-serving in a fine and ugly fashion.

Our allies will not be able to know if we're going to get them caught up in war crimes prosecutions (prosecutions only WE are immune to). They won't be able to trust much of anything that comes from our direction.

Ditto for our "enemies." So negotiating anything at all just  got a lot harder.

All in all, I can not think of a better way to eviscerate US diplomacy.



When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

[ Parent ]
Two points (4.00 / 3)
First, the irrelevant one (we can debate this another time if you wish). The US didn't win the cold war. The USSR collapsed because it was a fraud from the start. The nomenklatura that ran the country created a kleptocracy. Real production suffered, graft was rampant, production numbers were falsified and people knew they were living in a police state. (Sounds vaguely familiar...)

If the US had been instrumental in causing the eventual collapse we wouldn't have been so clueless when it happened. So much for the vaulted expertise of the CIA.

A single example will suffice:
Khrushchev: The Years in Power (Roy and Zhores Medvedev). 198 pages. Columbia University Press. 1976. ISBN 0-231-03939-5

They detail the failure of Khrushchev's attempt to introduce Iowa-style corn farming to the steppes and the ecological disaster which followed. Also they detail the false reports about rising production.

Second, as for following orders. Soldiers don't usually have the option of questioning orders, even if they think they are illegal. The record on this is clear: at a minimum courts martial, or in the field (depending on the army), execution.

As I understand it the FBI withdrew from the interrogations because they knew they were illegal, but the CIA operatives, being a quasi-military, didn't.

Prosecuting those who gave the orders is quite proper, but no pol wants to set the precedent, lest it be used against him when the dominant party changes next time.

Policies not Politics

[ Parent ]
Replies (4.00 / 2)
(1) I agree that the "America won the Cold War" trope is highly problematic, at best.  But I've long argued that we fought Nitze's Cold War, but won George Kennan's in spite of ourselves--a formulation that's perfectly compatible with the points and arguments you raise.

See "Kennan's Long Telegram and NSC-68: A Comparative Analysis", which I cite in several diaries over the past several years, including "Cut Points In The Foreign Policy Domain: Obama's Questionable Strategy" and Where's Obama? Questioning v Reinforcing [Foreign Policy] CW #3 (Political Duality of Rep v Dem 6c).

(2a) The point here is not about the punishment of the individuals, but the principle embraced by the one legally charged to enforce the law.  The issues you raise are properly a matter for the defense lawyer to raise at trial, and for the government itself to consider only in the context of a post-conviction sentencing hearing.

(2b) The US code of military justice reflects the Nuremberg Principles.  The fact that this is not sufficiently reinforced throughout the military is a structual institutional flaw that Obama ought to be working to correct, not reinforce.

(2c) Everyone agrees that the real criminals here are the ones at the top.  But you don't let the little fish off if you want to catch the big ones.  

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Torture (4.00 / 7)
Well this is a good a time as any to float my "torture" hypothesis.

The US was caught flatfooted by 9/11. It made us look weak and this was compounded by our inability to catch Osama.

People like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are basically bullies. That is, they are fundamentally cowards and can only project "manliness" by picking on the weak and helpless.

Combine this with the type of personality that goes into policing, the underlings tasked with carrying out orders, and you have all the conditions for Displacement.

If you can't punish the ones you wish, punish those at hand. This is why discussions about the effectiveness of torture are irrelevant. Claiming that ever harsher techniques were needed was just a cover for the real intent - revenge.

This is the same dynamic that we see when we have excesses like My Lai and some of the current attacks by our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I guess admitting that some people just like beating up others (or having their proxies do it) is too much of a dent in the American myth for it to be discussed openly.

Especially with Bush, who has had a long history of sadism and indifference to the sufferings of others, the pattern is clear. He is on record joking about executions while he was governor and had the most blood thirsty record of any.

Why the government won't call a monster a monster is an interesting question.

Policies not Politics

[ Parent ]
Agreed All Around (4.00 / 1)
Heck, why invade Iraq and topple bin Laden's arch-nemesis?  Because he had bigger building to blow up!  They even said so at the time.

Sure there were other reasons as well.  Over-determination is the name of the game, as always.  But the Iraqi invasion itself is clearly part of the larger pattern you point to here, and I thoroughly agree with it.

On a related note, I'm working on a diary about conservatism and predation which covers some overlapping territory.  Hopefully I'll get it done this weekend, midst the turmoil of emerging things to cover.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Godwin's Law? (4.00 / 2)
You're really going to say

But now, Obama thinks the Nazis were right, after all

and

Obama may not be Hitler, but he agrees completely with Hitler's underlings

That's a bit hyperbolic - just because he doesn't want to prosecute CIA officers does not mean he agrees with the Nazis.

It's one thing to disagree respectfully with some of Obama's policy choices like David does, or "trust, but organize" like Chris and Mike, but to outright equate Obama with Nazis is not something I'd expect to find on OpenLeft.

Goodwin's Law Repealed--9/11 Changed Everything (4.00 / 8)
Goodwin's Law can't legitimately be invoked to preclude discussions of actual Nazi actions, philosophy or legal arguments.

to outright equate Obama with Nazis is not something I'd expect to find on OpenLeft.

Well, to have a Democratic President directly invoke Nazi logic is not something I'd expect, either.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Plain English (4.00 / 6)

That's a bit hyperbolic - just because he doesn't want to prosecute CIA officers does not mean he agrees with the Nazis.

If the English language, let alone the law, can be said to mean anything at all, there's absolutely no way that the functionaries of the previous administration can justifiably escape prosecution under the the Nürnberg Principles.

We hanged Tojo and von Ribbentrop for ordering exactly the same atrocities which have come to light in the recently released torture memos. We also hanged a significant number of nameless concentration camp guards, SS officers, and officers in charge of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines for carrying them out.

And in a side note which should be of interest to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, and the like, we also hanged Julius Streicher.

The comparison is apt, and it will be made, here and elsewhere. Live with it.

[ Parent ]
I think you're being blinded by the use of Hitler's name here (4.00 / 4)
This isn't about Hitler. Pick any fascist (or any reasonable fascimile) thug and you'll yield nearly the same result. Pinochet, Franco, Stalin, whatever.

The point is that Obama is openly and flagrantly violating the law. He is breaking US law in refusing to prosecute War Criminals. He is aiding and abetting war criminals.

By extenstion, that makes him a war criminal as well. That is his choice. He is now an accessory after the fact to war crimes. He renounces all human rights in making this decision.

So if he's not an out and out fascist, he might as well be. He renounces the Rule of Law, the existence of human rights and all accountability.  Sounds kinda like a dictator, doesn't it?

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

[ Parent ]
If Obama flinches from applying the law (4.00 / 1)
maybe the Spaniards will pick up the flag? As an American, it humiliates me to think that's what we've come to, but if that's what it takes, so be it.

Montani semper liberi
Doesn't look like it's going to happen. (0.00 / 0)
From Al Jazeera:

"Spanish prosecutors have recommended against an investigation into allegations that six senior members of the administration of George Bush, the former US president, gave legal cover for the torture of "terror" suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

The prosecutors' ruling is not binding, but it could mean the case against the suspects fails to proceed.

Spanish law gives its courts jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases of torture, war crimes and other heinous offences, based on a doctrine known as universal justice.

On Thursday, Candido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney-general, said he would not support an investigation against the officials, including Alberto Gonzales, his former US counterpart."

http://english.aljazeera.net/n...

[ Parent ]
Not So Fast (4.00 / 3)
The professional prosecutors were in favor of proceeding and had drawn up a memo to that effect.  The reversal is a purely political one, involving the influence of the Obama Administration.

Most importantly, the last word resides with the judge, and this is the same judge who over-rode the same politicized advice from the prosecutor in the Pinochet case.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
My impression (4.00 / 2)
and I could be wrong, was that Spain was giving the US a chance to do the right thing, first?

But if we don't, they still have the authority to move forward.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Thank-you for this (4.00 / 4)
There's been a lot of talk lately about "forcing him to do it", but, at least on the progressive side of things, it's certainly has not been my impression that the rhetoric and criticism are sharp enough to make that happen. I really wish that more progressive voices would take the gloves off.

IMO, we need both "good cop" and "bad cop" critics, where the "good cop" is polite, but doesn't side-step the issue, and furthermore, makes denial, on the part of the listener, impossible. The good cops are still cops, and not friends of people doing bad things.

Your post is an example of the "good cop" statements that I find so hard to find in media.

"Bad cop" is also necessary, though it's a bit tricky, because it's very easy to cross the line, and be perceived as a loon, "hate filled", etc. However, I still wish that there were prominent "bad cop" critics (not necessarily here on OpenLeft, btw) who would be blunter than their "good cop" cousins. E.g., why don't I hear progressive bulldogs decrying the financial "rape" of American taxpayers, for the benefit of Wall Street "pigs"? Where, pray tell, is the anger? (Yes, I really want to hear those specific words used.) It's not healthy to stay angry all the time, but I don't see the passivity of Obama's non-teabagger type critics, or the public at large, as helpful, either.

(Somewhat related, but Obama has been characterized as a skillful anger management expert, working on behalf of elites.)

I hope some progressive bad cops appear on the scene, who will pursue the strategy of reaching out to passive citizens who are in a "wait and see" mode, and quite willing to just forget about torture, and lots of other unpleasant subjects. As long as they don't overdo it, articles such as your current one will come to be seen as moderate, fair, rational criticisms, which should be accepted as a mainstream point of view. You know, the work of good cops just doing their job.

Besides progressive bad cops in the media, we really also need them in Congress. I can't think of any American lawmaker who fits this description, but I think that George Galloway does for England's Parliament. If we had even 5 or 10 George Galloway's in Congress, I like to think that'd be enough that Obama would be scared to incur their wrath.


DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

Good Points (4.00 / 1)
Just you watch, though.  I'm sure there are many who will see this post as "bad cop" behavior that crosses the line.

"5 or 10 George Galloway's in Congress" sounds like a plan to me.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Someone at work (4.00 / 1)
a wonderful person in my estimation, after hearing what I thought about the free ride all these war criminals are getting, asked me with a smile, "Are you a terrorist, Michael?" I thought about it for a moment and then I said, "No, if you put me in a corner like that, I guess I just have to come out and face the fact -- I'm a social democrat."

Wow. Talk about a self-revelation.

[ Parent ]
I wonder if George Galloway would be open to a US speaking tour? (4.00 / 2)
In order of priority, he could excoriate

1) the passive left
2) the passive center
3) Obama
4) Congressional Dems
3) Congressional Republican has-beens

We shouldn't need to import loose canons, but what the heck! If that's what it takes! :-)

DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

[ Parent ]
Inspired Freudian typo of the day (0.00 / 0)

...loose canons...

That would be Yoo and Bybee, I presume, or perhaps their interpretation of the meaning of the words interrogation and torture. ;-)

[ Parent ]
Loose Canons (4.00 / 1)
Such as, for instance, Common Sense, and the Nuremberg Principles themselves.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
The Beatitudes (4.00 / 3)
have been just wrecking Christians for millenia.  Most of the red-letter stuff, actually.

"Loose canons" is a really interesting concept I think.  There are lots of them.  

[ Parent ]
One thing I haven't seen (4.00 / 2)
so much remarked upon is why the idea that "I was only following orders" is so irrational and immoral to embrace, both for Nazis and for the Bush administration.

Suppose one does accept this idea. Then, in the Nazi regime, who can be held accountable for the atrocities they committed? Can't every single official and functionary and SS member claim that they were acting under orders, orders ultimately deriving only from Hitler himself? Is it in any way plausible that the only war criminal in all of Nazi Germany who might rightly be held responsible for the Holocaust might be Hitler himself? Isn't that absurd on its face? Doesn't it deeply offend our sense of moral responsibility to embrace such an outcome?

Likewise, once one accepts that idea for the Bush administration, can't a like reduction of all orders to adopt torture be blamed on one official -- perhaps Bush, but, depending on how much "plausible deniability" he had built around him, perhaps someone else? Can't, say, Yoo and Bybee and others declare that they were under orders to find justifications for these methods in the law, much as a lawyer always behaves on behalf of a client to seek justifications for a desired action? Who is exempt from such excuses, once they are granted?  

True, But (4.00 / 1)
what about plain old-fashioned personal responsibility?

Oh, now I get it.

"Personal responsibility" means just following orders no matter what.

Never mind!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Well (4.00 / 3)
you're right that it is fundamentally an issue of personal responsibility.

But the point of the argument I presented is to demonstrate how such matters must be considered issues of personal responsibility.

The argument is basically a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that one escapes personal responsibility by invoking the "following orders" defense. When one assumes that that defense is legitimate, we can see plainly the systemic horrors it enables. We realize that can't possibly be the morally correct outcome, and so we realize that responsibility must be distributed across all those who participated in the atrocities, given that they themselves had a real moral choice.

[ Parent ]
Oh, I Agree Completely (4.00 / 1)
I wasn't trying to undercut or distract from your argument.

To the contrary, I was just looking for a way to add a little decorative salute.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Who indeed (4.00 / 1)
I seem to remember reading some years back about a defendant charged with murder during the commission of a burglary who claimed that he was acting in self-defense. When physically attacked by the owner of the home, he was in fear for his life, so....

Specious legal reasoning is the last refuge of scoundrels of all kinds.

[ Parent ]
A step too far Paul.. (4.00 / 1)
To conclude such a finely written argument with "Obama thinks the Nazis were right",is an unfair and subjective jump, don't you think?  

The Nuremburg Trials were over outright acts of unquestionable inhumanity.  For a soldier to stand and watch as innocent children were tricked into gas chambers, no one would deny that soldier's act was the equivalent of being an accomplice deserving similar punishment to that of the one giving the orders.  

In that light alone, I can't make a blanket call that the interrogators who committed acts of torture were accomplices of Bush and Cheney.  We absolutely know some were - but without knowing the state of mind of each interrogator it's an injustice, under our standards, to equate their acts with a gas chamber guard.

But second to that is the justification of each act. I heard teenage girls spewing the most violent and hateful garbage toward every dark skinned kid in their school after 9-11.  At fund raisers for the victims - same thing. Mothers, grandparents, little children - didn't matter.

Can I equate those interrogators already pumped up with military and or mercenary training and bravado,  
now exploding with a nationalistic fervor after 9-11 to that of that gas camp soldier??
Absolutely not.

I'm trying to speak to what the right thing to do is, from an objective view.
Personally I think the better puinishment is simply to have them all brought to a dark cold tomb somewhere, stripped naked in preparation for a full cavity search and interrogation under every legal method allowed for a solid 30 days.  Send those who didn't enjoy it back to desk jobs only.  Fire the others and send them back to Texas.


Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

Your analysis (4.00 / 3)
however fails to acknowledge one crucial fact that differentiates the Nazi functionary from the Bush functionary.

Yes, the Nazi functionary may have engaged in acts of far greater barbarity. But, in their own defense, they can also plausibly argue that the consequences of their refusal to follow orders might be their death by execution.

What can the CIA operative say that the consequences of their refusal might be? I'd be surprised if they could even make out the case that they would be fired -- more likely, they would simply be subject to reassignment, or to some kind of demotion. Most certainly, those consequences would be vastly milder than what would be claimed by Nazi functionaries.

[ Parent ]
But you made my point.. (0.00 / 0)
There is no comparison between the state of mind of the two in the carrying out of their duties.

No court in the world can or would justify a soldier saving his own ass by letting thousands of children die versus a soldier willing to punish a few prisoners of war by using extreme methods in order to save thousands from death.

The key difference, in my limited legal reasoning, is 9-11.


Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

[ Parent ]
You're just not (4.00 / 1)
responding to my argument.

My point is that the consequences for a Nazi disobeying orders are vastly more severe -- including, plausibly, his own death by execution -- than any that might be exacted against a CIA agent or other operative who would refuse to obey an order to torture.

While the atrocities a Nazi might engage in are obviously of greater enormity than those of the CIA agent, that is compensated nearly exactly by the relatively mild (if any, really) consequences of a refusal to obey the orders. My guess is that CIA agents and others would simply be reassigned to other duties. How can they under those circumstances in any way justify engaging in what their own moral consciences, as well as what they know to be the historical precedent, would recognize as torture.

[ Parent ]
And your (4.00 / 2)
point that 9/11 suddenly changes this underlying dynamic -- that somehow, the CIA was torturing to save thousands from death -- is really perfectly in line with the worst sort of right wing, fearmongering response.

Every government has some excuse for ordering torture -- Hitler argued the claim that Jews have undermined the German nation, and played a major role in the defeat of Germany in WWI and all the suffering and death attending that defeat (see the "Stab in the Back" theory). Other governments attribute other horrors to those whom they torture. This is what is always done to make it seem morally justifiable to torture or commit atrocities.

You're just falling in with the same kind of fearmongering.

[ Parent ]
Curious? (4.00 / 2)
We do not know the state of mind of the interrogators but we also do not know the state of mind of the Nazi soldier.

I am sure that for many of them they truly bought the argument that the Jews and dissenters were harmful to Germany and needed to be eliminated not just for safety of Germany but to build for the future without the problems of the past.

Just because they believed it does not make it true and does not excuse them from being able to go to the deeper truth that an injustice to one person is injustice to us all.

The defense that we were just trying to make the world safer just does not work.  I am sure it can be used by every genocidal country in the world.

[ Parent ]
Your Logic Is Flawed (4.00 / 2)
To conclude such a finely written argument with "Obama thinks the Nazis were right",is an unfair and subjective jump, don't you think?
 

Not at all. Aside from the excellent points made by frankly0 and Gibson, there's a logically more fundamental one:  You are confusing logical argumentation with the substance of evidence.

I'm not claiming that the bararbarism of the CIA interrogators is equal to that of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg.  Indeed, such a claim would go quite counter to the underlying spirit of the Nuremberg Principles, which is that no sort of comparative or contextual rationale can be used to argue against moral and legal responsibility, and hence, guilt--although it can be used to argue for mitigaiton of punishment after convision.

As far as I'm concerned, I think that a good case could be made that most of those guilty of torture could simply be dismissed from their jobs, and ordered to pay restitution.  Prison time would not necessarily be required for justice to be served.  But all that depends on first holding people accountable in accordance with existing law.

Hence, your entire argument along the lines of moral (non-)equivalence is beside the point.

Which brings us back to what is the point:  That Obama is relying on exactly the same rationale as the Nazis invoking the Nuremberg Defense.

This can only be "an unfair and subjective jump" if it is factually untrue.

But it's not.

His words and theirs are virtually interchangable.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I partially disagree, rspectfully. (0.00 / 0)
I'm not a fan of Obama's weak and moderate views.  However, I think his legal reasoning in this case only, stems from the same stance that I postulated above:

No court in the world can or would justify a soldier saving his own ass by letting thousands of children die versus a soldier willing to punish a few prisoners of war by using extreme methods in order to save thousands from death.

The key difference, in my limited legal reasoning, is 9-11.

Were it not for that one catastrophic and traumatizing event everything you said is on point.
As the Prez he's unfortunately got to hold 9-11 on a pedestal, from which all other things are secondary.

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

[ Parent ]
Hitler Had His Reasons, Too (4.00 / 5)
Not impressed.

The belief in unique circumstances is a form of mental disorder.

Though not, IMHO, sufficient to sustain an insanity defense.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
But the people we tortured (4.00 / 5)
were not "prisoners of war." They were in many cases innocent civilians caught up in dragnets and turned in for bounties. Then, when they gave names under torture, the people they named were captured and tortured, to produce more names, more people to torture, etc.

Ever read about the Salem witch trials?

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
We don't know the full story, yet. (4.00 / 3)
According to some sources they did torture children, in order to "break" the parents.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
. (4.00 / 1)
Obama takes the path of least political resistance. If the american public and the media won't care then criminal investigations won't happen. And one of the worst things that could happen is a prosecution that becomes politicized and ruins the credibility of ever pursuing something like this again.

I mean, don't get me wrong. Comparing Obama to Hitler is just the sort of stupid shit that would trivialize this process. But there is certainly a place for educating and mobilizing the public on this.

Obama Embraces Nazi Nurermberg Trials Logic: "They Were Only Following Orders" | 41 comments
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