Why War Criminals Watch?
People of conscience must insist on accountability for the actions of government officials. The status of the United States as a major world power results in immunity, in practice, to accountability for its crimes. It is the obligation of citizens who recognize that no country or government is above the law of human decency, as currently embedded in international law, to demand public accountability in a court of law. Only then will it be possible to repudiate the course set by the Bush administration, continued by each succeeding administration, and accelerated by the current fascist Trump administration, on the issues of “preemptive war” and treatment of prisoners.
At the beginning of the 20th century Elihu Root said that “international law relies for its effectiveness on the approval of international public opinion.” At the beginning of the 21st century, when international law against war crimes and crimes against humanity are clearly established, indictment of U.S. officials for their crimes rests on the arousal of national public opinion.
What War Criminals Watch Does
Our work is dedicated to generating public momentum and pressure to achieve indictments of these accused war criminals. To that end, we track the appointment of former U.S. government administrators to senior posts in business and academia (universities, think tanks, foundations, corporations, law firms) and scrutinize work of officials and advisers within each administration, including the current fascist Trump administration.
Only an energized and politically active public can force accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity. War criminals must be publicly shamed and prevented from occupying powerful positions in our society. We cannot give in to desperation. This situation is intolerable and must be stopped.
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Since World War II, the United States has greatly expanded its global military presence and interventions around the world in order to protect overseas investments and to exploit global resources, including human labor, to establish itself as the dominant super power.
But with the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, the United States government shifted from simply selectively ignoring human rights norms to categorically asserting the right to overturn decades of hard-won principles of international human rights law. The “war on terror” response to that horrific event brought to a new level and solidified the criminal program of the U.S. government, sacrificing liberty to a false promise of security, encompassing:
- wars of aggression, unjust occupations, and the use of targeted killing by drones, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians around the world
- mass surveillance on whole populations, with intent to chill protest and dissent/indefinite detention and torture of prisoners at Guantánamo and other sites, including torturing hunger strikers with force-feeding
- torture, intimidation and prosecution of whistleblowers while covering up for those responsible for crimes against humanity.
War Criminals Watch was originally founded to demand prosecutions of the Bush and subsequent administrations’ high officials guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Obama administration was followed by the fascist Trump/Pence coterie, then Biden and now back again to fascist Trump. The climate change that Trump supporters deny represents another crime against humanity. The Biden administration catalogued Russia’s war crimes but totally disregarded any and all U.S. war crimes while moving the world towards the ultimate war crime and crime against humanity – nuclear war. The Biden administration was an active partner in the genocide in Palestine, providing the weapons used and diplomatic cover for the Israeli government in violation of the Genocide Convention. Now, under Trump, in partnership with the fascist Netanyahu administration in Israel, those genocidal crimes are compounded while seemingly endless war continues throughout the region and much of the world — with the U.S. playing a major role.
A Look at International Law and U.S. Behavior
The brutality of the U.S. government’s “war on terror” has been condemned both by the court of international public opinion and by the Principles of International Law governing human rights. The wars of aggression in the Middle East and the torture of those caught up in them are clearly defined as war crimes by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture and other treaties to which the United States is a signatory. (The United States’ own U.S. War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime).
The Principles of International Law, recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal, provide no defense for war crimes. Similarly, the Convention Against Torture, which defines torture as a war crime, provides that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”
The prohibition against war crimes is thus absolute. As U.S. Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed at Nuremberg: “No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy. The same applies to other war crimes as well. The war crimes of one’s opponents are no justification for one’s own.” As he further stated, “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”
We find, however, that because of the political and military power of the United States, that U.S. war criminals are not being brought to court for reckoning. The United States has refused to put itself under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, making it extremely difficult and time consuming to hold any U.S. official subject to criminal investigation and prosecution. And, we see that in the accusations brought against the Israeli government and Netanyahu in particular by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (which the U.S. never joined), the U.S. has completely ignored those cases including their calls for the arrest of Netanyahu and others.
We have an obligation to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity after they occur as well as to stop the shameful policies that allow them to continue.
During the Obama administration, an aggressive, full-scale whitewashing of the “war on terror” crimes was completed in August 2012, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced the closing without charges of the only two cases under investigation relating to the U.S. torture program. This decision, said The New York Times, “eliminat[ed] the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA.”
Several leaders accused of Bush-era war crimes remained in the Obama administration – for example, Stanley McChrystal, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, Jonathan Fredman, and John O. Brennan, former head of the CIA. All have been involved in military and domestic “national security” policy. In April 2012 Brennan was the first Obama administration official to publicly acknowledge the CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In his speech at the Wilson Center, he argued for the legality, morality and effectiveness of the program. In 2011/2012 he also helped to codify the process, under the aegis of the Disposition Matrix database by which people outside of war zones are put on the list of drone targets. The reorganization helped “concentrate power” over the process inside the White House.
As for targeting U.S. citizens for drone attacks, former Attorney General Eric Holder openly adduced a new “permission” for such killing with the disingenuous claim that the “due process” clause of the 5th amendment does not require “judicial process.” In other words, the President can legally kill U.S. citizens by doing “due process” in the White House.
No constraints by courts or Congress were placed on the Obama administration’s war crimes. Despite Obama’s declaration of transparency in government, a wall of secrecy shrouded the conduct of wars, including drone war and covert operations. By his words and rash actions, Trump also showed a willingness to attack foreign countries in violation of international law and in disregard of the constraints of the U.S. Constitution which reserves to Congress the power to wage war. This has been an outgrowth of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) which was passed by Congress in the aftermath of 9/11 expanding presidential military authority. Even larger numbers of civilians were killed despite and in open violation of U.S. and international law. Authorization for air strikes is being outsourced more broadly, obfuscating at times the trail of responsibility. Broad power was given to the CIA to conduct drone strikes, beyond Obama’s delegation of that power to the DoD’s Joint Special Operations Command. One outgrowth of this is removal of requirements to report on numbers killed during an operation. And, Trump’s stated interest in using nuclear weaponry.
During his presidency, Biden called for Putin’s prosecution on war crimes charges (although the U.S. doesn’t belong to the ICC). Biden increased the U.S. military budget even beyond previous record-making budgets. The wars continued and Biden continued good relations with the Saudi government, pushing for more Saudi oil in order to weaken Russia and did not reinstate the Obama treaty with Iran. Most dangerous of all, to all life on this planet, rather than pulling back on NATO encirclement of Russia and urging/facilitating negotiations to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration intensified U.S. and NATO military assistance of all kinds to Ukraine. By providing the weapons to Israel used against the people of Gaza, using its veto in the UN to support the ongoing genocide and by the majority of Democrats and Republicans inviting Netanyahu to address Congress where he was cheered, it was made clear to all where the U.S. government stood and still stands today as all the above has continued and only been increased under the current Trump administration. The world has been brought to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Back in January 2022, the Doomsday Clock had the world at 100 seconds before midnight. With each passing day, we are getting even closer.
Further Sources of Information
For a PowerPoint overview explaining International Law, written by Jeanne Mirer, President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, click here.
For Facts on International Law, compiled by Brooklyn for Peace, click here.