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Statement on Behalf of Lt. Ehren Watada

By Francis A. Boyle

Since the US Supreme Court's installation of George W. Bush as president in January 2001, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States of America that demonstrates little (if any) respect for fundamental considerations of international law, international organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements for maintaining international peace and security. What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international legal order by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. This is not simply a question of giving or withholding the benefit of the doubt when it comes to complicated matters of foreign affairs and defense policies to a US government charged with the security of both its own citizens and those of its allies in Europe, the western hemisphere, and the Pacific. Rather, the Bush administration's foreign policies represent a gross deviation from those basic rules of international deportment and civilized behavior that the United States government had traditionally played the pioneer role in promoting for the entire world community. Even more seriously, in many instances, specific components of the Bush administration's foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and US domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles.

Lt. Ehren Watada

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, as well as grave breaches of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare, torture, disappearances, and assassinations. In addition, various members of the Bush administration committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offenses that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles were international crimes in their own right: planning, preparation, solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting, etc. Of course, the great irony of today's situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg, representatives of the US government participated in the prosecution, punishment, and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all around the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any person for any reason, no matter how monstrous their crimes: George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, Ariel Sharon, etc.

Furthermore, according to basic principles of international criminal law, all high-level civilian officials and military officers in the US government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control committed or were about to commit international crimes, and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes. This category of officialdom who actually knew (or at least should have known) of the commission of such substantive or inchoate international crimes under their jurisdiction and failed to do anything about it typically includes the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of Central Intelligence, the National Security Adviser, the Attorney General, the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional CINCs, and the President and Vice-President. These US government officials and their immediate subordinates, among others, were personally responsible for the commission of (or at least complicity in the commission of) crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles—at a minimum.

One generation ago, the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the "good" Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi terror state, even unto death.

Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the "good" Americans? Well, there are some good Americans. They are getting prosecuted for protesting against illegal US military interventions and war crimes around the world. First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is America's equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. He is the archetypal American hero whom we should be bringing into our schools and teaching our children to emulate, instead of those wholesale purveyors of gratuitous violence and bloodshed adulated by the US government, America's power elite, and the mainstream corporate news media and its interlocked entertainment industry.

In international legal terms, the Bush administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

As a consequence, American citizens and soldiers such as Lieutenant Watada possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the US Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by US government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.

If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a third world war.