America is not Nazi Germany. But over the last 7+ years America came much closer to looking and feeling like Nazi Germany than almost anyone would have imagined beforehand. Torture became officially--if secretly and surreptiously--part of the law of the land. Not only were war crimes authorized and committed from the highest offices in the land, and violations of constitutional rights made routine, but those who dared stand up against this darkness were vilified, persecuted, and made to suffer for doing what was right.
We have pulled ourselves back from the abyss--but only just barely and tentatively, with no assurances of what the morrow may bring, especially if economic recession should deepen and prolong over a period of several years. That is why President Obama's pledge not to prosecute CIA agents who committed war crimes is so deeply troubling. It's not just a matter of letting hundreds, perhaps thousands of "low-level" criminals go free--as if that weren't bad enough by itself. It's a matter of setting a dark and unholy precedent, whose bitter fruit we may find ourselves tasting far sooner than we could possibly imagine. This cannot be. This is why I am writing this brief diary series--to widen the scope of our thinking from the so-far limited scope of the CIA officers who have been the focus of attention up till now.
While the example of the Nuremberg Trials is used often these days to describe what prosecutions might look like, few seem to remember that the prosecution of war criminals after World War II was much larger and took place over a longer period of time than most people realize. This is important when one considers the context of President Obama's granting of immunity to lower-level CIA interrogators (if they acted in "good faith" upon "authoritative" legal advice).
What even a cursory examination of historical precedent demonstrates is that after World War II prosecution of war criminals and accessories to war crimes were not limited to the famous Nuremberg 22 high-level Nazis, nor the few hundred or so prosecuted through the Nuremberg tribunals, but thousands of accused throughout Europe.
Among other things, Valtin takes note of America's record:
It may surprise you that the United States, for instance, has an Office of Special Investigations (OSI) at the US Department of Justice. Its mission was to hunt down war criminals and bring them to justice. Established only in 1979, the OSI has a sterling record:
As of 2008, OSI has successfully prosecuted 107 Nazi persecutors. OSI has also worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security to stop more than 180 former European and Japanese Axis perpetrators and suspected perpetrators of acts of persecution at U.S. ports of entry and bar them from entering the United States
(1979 represents a very late start, to be sure. Still, better late than never.)
In addition to the well-known Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46 [of 22 defendents], there were Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings held between December 1946, and April 1949, which tried 177 persons. Individual countries also prosecuted war criminals in national courts of law. The British held trials of the commandant and staff of the Bergen-Belsen camp, those responsible for forced labor, and the owners and executives of the manufacturer of Zyklon B, among others. The Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, West Germany, and Romania were some of the other countries that brought war criminals to trial.
Poland was relatively quick to convict the camp personnel from Auschwitz - at least those that could be found. Trials were initiated against at least 600 members of the Auschwitz camp personnel. Among these were the two camp commandants, Rudolf Höss and Arthur Liebehenschel, who were sentenced to death in 1947. Rudolf Höss was hanged in Auschwitz in 1941. A total of 21 were executed....
In West Germany the so-called Auschwitz Trials were conducted against the camp guards from the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz. The largest of these trials took place in Frankfurt am Main between 1963 and 1965, where 20 were accused. 17 were given jail sentences....
On 3 July 1964 twelve of the personnel in the extermination camp Sobibor stood accused of participating in the murder of Jews in the camp. All twelve were accused of assisting in the killings. The trial itself began in Hagen on 6 September 1965 and ended on 20 December 1966. More than 100 witnesses were called.
This is just a sampling of the post Valtin has put together. I highly recommend reading the entire post for yourself. As Valtin says, toward the end:
As we can see, the amount of people prosecuted for war crimes is much more than most people (even myself, prior to doing this research) imagined!
As the protest over the immunity granted by Obama to CIA torturers continues -- as to how much immunity it really grants, whether it was smart, whether it was a capitulation to blackmail, or a wily maneuver to get the top leadership of the Bush years -- we should all consider the lessons of history as regards prosecutions for war crimes. This history, so recent it seems, is already largely forgotten or misunderstood as pertains to the prosecutions argument.
The prosecutions for Nazi war crimes have lasted for decades, and still continue. We should not have the same fate befall us. We should have a much swifter reckoning, one that we can actually accept as fair and just--not one forced on us from above by a morally, legally and politically unaccountable elite. We should recognize right off that we don't even know how many people were involved in doing what, and that without such basic knowledge, nothing remotely approaching closure, justice or reconciliation can be possible.
We are--whether we admit it or not--much more deeply wounded as a nation than any of our political elites are willing to admit. They will not face up to what has been done in our names. We must force them to do so.
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