What has been clear to survivors of America’s heartless bombings, invasions, occupations, and covert violence for a long time is that American intellectuals, university professors, widely read authors and journalists, who speak against this carnage, never seem to say or write that Americans should be brought to justice for it. Monopolized corporate media hails and stimulates American demands for 9/11 justice beyond reason and limitless vengeance. Though Americans have taken the lives of many millions in what presidential candidate Ron Paul called undeclared, unconstitutional and therefore criminal wars since Korea onward, the idea of justice for these nations seems inconceivable.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark endorses, and has inspired, the educational and stimulus website Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now, which contains pertinent laws and a country by country history of US crimes. The immediate hoped for effect of the campaign is to seed as rapidly as possible, the idea of US eventual prosecution as a topic of conversation throughout the world. What is now unthinkable and unimaginable in majority mankind, will become first plausible, then possible, then expected, then inevitable and necessary in a sane and just world, able to deal with the problems that affect survival.
Internet’s Dissident Voice, which identifies itself as “A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice,” is the first eminent publication, writer or journalist, this author knows of to have called for the law to be brought down upon American crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.
Dissident Voice features at the bottom of each DV mailing list a statement and link as follows: Dissident Voice supports the call to Prosecute US Crimes against Humanity Now Campaign.
The second, was Nicolas Davies, distinguished author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, who, in a sedate, soft-spoken and kindly twenty minute plus talk on Russian RT stated that Americans involved in the horrendous beyond description decimation of Iraq and more than a million of its population, must be punished. Davis said, as Martin Luther King Jr. had cried out about Vietnam, that Americans must make reparations for the damage done. Davies noted that not a penny of the 3.5 billion dollars Nixon promised Vietnam has been paid, and how when the International Court of Justice convicted the US over sabotage and mining the harbors of Nicaragua, the US disregarded the judgement as unauthorized.
Action taken by the two American writer-reporters, seems a presage of more widely read authors of anti-imperial literature calling for justice for America’s millions of victims in Asia, Latin America and Africa – especially once the cry for justice resounds from abroad, as it inevitably will, as the United States loses some of it financial clout to keep victims quiet about justice or suffer worse in sanctions.
The third writer on Internet, that we know of, to make this call is Kieran Kelly of New Zealand with his uncomfortably explicit and graphic On Genocide: The United States of Genocide.
An interview of yours truly last January by Kim Petersen of Dissident Voice best explains the mind boggling lack of logic, understanding and compassion for the cry for justice of those suffering the genocidal nature of events that are usually described by antiwar critics as bad or mistaken foreign policy:
Kim Petersen: Recently you have focused on a Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign. DV agrees with the cause 100%, as — obviously — prosecution for war crimes might serve to give pause to war criminals, something that Nuremberg does not seem to have done, as aggression — “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” — has been serially launched by hyper-empire. You have openly been taking issue with some people usually identified as progressives for not having the same focus as you, and this comes across as, with all due respect, bully-like and attempting to coerce something that cannot be coerced: solidarity. Why should every social justice activist conform to your stance?
JJ: My stance? I didn’t make the law. Social justice activists should obey the law like everyone else should obey the law, and not be an accomplice, supporter, or accessory after the fact to American mass murder ongoing on for sixty two years.
I have been taking issue with prominent journalists who expose US crimes but are careful not to call for their prosecution and consistently ignore the 1967 teaching of Martin Luther King Jr. a teaching that was such an enormous threat to investors in war and thievery.
Or to put it more directly, I take issue with them for calling their organizations antiwar while they focus on getting a better cut of the imperialist pie for Americans continuing to kill for Wall St. overseas. Better housing, health care, higher wages, veterans perks, safety from rape of our women training to go kill overseas, homosexual rights, lower taxes, voting rights so minorities can participate in the choosing between two parties promising more war. Look over the daily fare of antiwar journalists and see how many of their articles are about domestic issues while the US crimes against humanity go on unaddressed by them.
Bullying? I realized long ago that my colleagues, and even some of my mentors, have no intention to stop Americans from continuing to murder people in their own beloved countries, more often than not in their own homes. They have no intention, for believing it to be impossible to stop, or being aware that protests have never ended or prevented a war. Most volunteers want to feel better about themselves and present themselves as Americans innocent of war support and participation, which of course is not true. Too many progressive sites avoid taking on the horrific lies of commercial media when so well planted that their liberal sources of funding would be at risk. Example, Libya and Syria. … ((For the rest of the interview see “Prosecuting the Crimes of Hyper-empire.”))