Again, why George W. Bush must be tried as a war criminal

by Bob Fitrakis

The new revelations in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, provide
further evidence to convict President George W.
Bush of war crimes.

As one of the 49 original signers of the UN Charter, the United States
committed itself to the ideals and practices of the norms of
international law. Only two U.S. senators voted against the treaty,
which includes Article 2(4) that specifically prohibits "the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state." In a September 23, 2003 speech to the United Nations, President Bush noted that both the UN Charter and American founding documents "recognize a moral law that stands above men and nations, which must be defended and
enforced by men and nations." Following World War II, just such action
was taken at the Nuremberg trials and American, British, French and
Soviet jurists established Article VI of the Nuremberg Charter, which
legally defines "Crimes Against Peace."

To commit a crime against peace, one must engage in "planning,
preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression, or a war in
violation of international treaties . . . or participation in a common
plan or conspiracy . . . to wage an aggressive war." Bush is guilty on
all these counts. The most damning evidence coming not from the liberal
left, but in a series of well-documented books providing revelations by
people in his own administration or party. Now, with Woodward’s work,
the President is condemned with his own words.

Author Ron Susskind’s book about former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul
O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty, reveals that from the very beginning of
the Bush administration, the President was plotting and conspiring to
wage aggressive war against Iraq. In Against All Enemies, Bush’s
counter-terrorism expert, Richard Clarke, not only confirmed O’Neill’s
account of the Bush administration’s obsession with attacking Iraq, yet
also shows us an insider’s view on the illegal planning, preparation and
initiation of the war through the deliberate manipulation of
intelligence. President Nixon’s strategist, Kevin Phillips, documents
four generations of war profiteering and deception by the Bush/Walker
clan in American Dynasty.

Finally, in the latest blockbuster, Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate
reporter Bob Woodward outlines Bush’s illegal attack plan. Woodward
establishes that five days after 9/11, the President was secretly
scheming to go after, not bin Laden - the man responsible for the 9/11
attack - but rather bin Laden’s arch enemy Saddam Hussein. Specifically,
72 days after 9/11, Bush gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the
orders to draw up the secret war plans. Once enacted, these plans made
George W. Bush a war criminal, just like the Nazi generals at Nuremberg.
Bush, supported by the mainstream corporate media, has hidden behind the
semantics of "pre-emption." Under international law, a pre-emptive
strike is allowed when a nation is preparing for an imminent attack.
Bush would be hard pressed before any tribunal, short of a Texas
kangaroo court, to establish that the Iraqi military was an imminent
threat to the U.S. Iraq was a defeated, heavily impoverished nation,
under economic sanctions and restricted by U.S.-enforced no-fly zones in
both its north and south.

The so-called "Bush doctrine" is in reality an echo of the illegal Nazi
doctrine of "preventive" war, which asserted that any country that may
pose a future non-specific threat can be attacked and occupied. This is
not "higher moral law," rather it is a repugnant Nazi doctrine last
heard when Germany attacked Poland prior to World War II.
Add to the mounting evidence against Bush’s criminality the fact that
his key advisors are the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who
have been publicly waging a campaign to attack Iraq since the end of the
first Gulf War in 1991. A quick visit to the Project for a New American
Century website (www.newamericancentury.org) establishes their blatant
disregard for both the UN Charter and Nuremberg principles. Their neocon
or vulcan ideology draws in part from renegade Trotskyist Max
Shachtman’s belief that authoritarian regimes are incapable of reform.
Thus, they adopt the rhetoric of human rights hawks - painting any
conflict as a clash between "freedom and tyranny" - to resurrect
discredited Nazi war doctrines. Even the ever-cautious Columbus Dispatch
recently editorialized that Bush is a "militant unilateralist" and
attributes the President’s rhetoric and worldview to the "Vulcans."

Woodward’s book reads, as do Clarke’s and Susskind’s, as another lengthy
prosecutory indictment against the Bush administration. Bush’s only
defense against such blatant illegality is to find the real or imagined,
or more likely recently planted, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
For the last two months the Mehr News Agency from Tehran, Iran has
reported allegations that the U.S. and British governments have been
unloading weapons of mass destruction into southern Iraq. The news
service claims that these weapons are dismantled Soviet-era nuclear
material and weapons. Reuters reported these allegations as well. The
President’s recent comments that he hasn’t given up on finding weapons
of mass destruction, sound eerily familiar to his refrain in Florida on
Election Eve, when he was asked if he was going to concede the election
when exit polls showed him losing. He told the media that his brother
Jeb’s political forces on the ground were indicating different results.
What are Bush’s forces on the ground in Iraq doing now, particularly his
private contractor friends?

For a President who took us into war under an illegal Nazi doctrine and
sold it to the American people based on cooked intelligence information,
would it not be the next step to simply plant the evidence he needs
amidst the chaos of a disintegrating Iraq? With the illusion of Iraqi
sovereignty fading and potential disaster looming with a premature
turnover, Bush’s re-election bid may be based on his hitting another
"trifecta": "capturing" Osama bin Laden, "trying" Saddam Hussein, and
"finding" weapons of mass destruction. The recent alarmist talk about
another terrorist attack prior to the election should be cause for great
concern for an administration that conveniently ignored the overwhelming
evidence of the Al Qaeda attack.

News services worldwide must stop the madness of George the Lesser, who
was as ill-prepared to accept dynastic succession as the infamous
Ethelred the Unready. Historians of the British monarchy suggest that
the term "Unready" should be read as the archaic British term "redeless"
meaning "without counsel." Thus, Ethelred, like George the Lesser, made
mistakes by impulsively pursuing action without wise counsel.
Thankfully, the wisest of Bush’s former counsels are warning the people
this election year. The people of the United States need to hear their
warnings and constitute an international People’s Tribunal to try
President Bush for the war crimes he is committing.

Bob Fitrakis is senior editor of the Free Press (http://freepress.org)
and co-author of George W. Bush vs. the SuperPower of Peace.