How America Gets Away with Murder

Michael Mandel

Description

In Kosovo, America claimed its war was a 'humanitarian intervention,' in Afghanistan, 'self-defense,' and in Iraq, it claimed the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations. Yet each of these wars was illegal according to established rules of international law. According to these rules, illegal wars fall within the category of 'supreme international crimes'. So how come the war crimes tribunals never manage to turn their sights on America and always wind up putting America's enemies - 'the usual suspects' - on trial?



This new book by renowned scholar Michael Mandel offers a critical account of America's illegal wars and a war crimes system that has granted America's leaders an unjust and dangerous impunity, effectively encouraging their illegal wars and the war crimes that always flow from them.
PART I: ILLEGAL WARS / COLLATERAL DAMAGE

1. Iraq 2003

2. Afghanistan 2001

3. Kosovo 1999

PART II: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

4. The War Crimes Tribunal

5. The Trial of Milosevic

6. America Gets Away with Murder

7. Rounding up the Usual Suspects while America Gets Away with Murder

Sujets

• Political Process
• Political Science
• USA
• United States of America
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783719136
• Langue: English

Extrait

How America Gets Away With Murder
Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity
Michael Mandel
 
First published 2004 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Michael Mandel 2004
The right of Michael Mandel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 2152 6 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 2151 8 paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1913 6 epub
ISBN 978 1 7837 1914 3 kindle
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mandel, Michael.
How America gets away with murder: illegal wars, collateral damage and crimes against humanity / Michael Mandel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–7453–2152–6 (HBK) –– ISBN 0–7453–2151–8 (PBK)
1. Aggression (International law) 2. War (International law) 3. War crimes. 4. Crimes against humanity. 5. United States––Foreign relations––2001– I. Title.
KZ6355.M36 2004
345'.0235––dc22
2004005804
 
 
 
 
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Printed and bound in Canada by Transcontinental Printing
 
For Karen, Tevi and Orly
 
Contents
Acknowledgments
Frequently Cited Sources
Part I. Illegal Wars/Collateral Damage
1.
Iraq 2003
 
The Law and the War Against Iraq
 
Security Council Authorization
 
Self-Defense
 
Humanitarian Intervention
2.
Afghanistan 2001
 
Collateral Damage
3.
Kosovo 1999
 
Kosovo
 
The Road to Rambouillet
 
Racak
 
Rambouillet
 
Humanitarian Intervention
Part II. Crimes Against Humanity
4.
The War Crimes Tribunal
 
The Holocaust Analogy
 
Bosnia and the Birth of the ICTY
 
The ICTY at War
5.
The Trial of Milosevic
 
Milosevic at The Hague
 
Victor’s Justice
6.
America Gets Away with Murder
 
The Case against NATO
 
Crimes against Humanity
 
Crimes against the Laws and Customs of War
 
Targets
 
The Illegality of the War
7.
Rounding up the Usual Suspects while America Gets Away with Murder
 
The International Criminal Court
 
The Americans Have Ways
 
Nuremberg
 
Tokyo
 
The Pinochet Case
 
Belgium
 
Justice
 
Deterrence
 
Truth
 
Peace
 
Vision
Notes
Index
 
Acknowledgments
Of the many people who contributed to this book in large and small ways, I am most indebted to Karen Golden, Ed Herman, and Max Mandel for their generous help and encouragement throughout the project, and for the care they took in reading and commenting on the manuscript. I would also like to single out for special thanks my research assistants Melanie Banka, Trung Nguyen, Raha Shahidsaless and Jeremy Wilton; my faculty assistants Lynne Fonseca, Angela Monardo and Roberta Parris; helpful friends, family and colleagues Noam Chomsky, Gail Davidson, Harry Glasbeek, Reuben Hasson, David Jacobs, Giulia Mandel, Lucy Mandel, Mika Mihailovic, Natasa Mihailovic, Chiara Giovanucci Orlandi, Marianne Rogers, Helena Ruken, Michael Scharf, Wolfgang Schulz and Snezana Vitorovich. I’m very grateful to Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto and to the Facoltà di Giurisprudenza of the University of Bologna for their invaluable institutional support. Finally, for their hard work in turning the manuscript into a book, I would like to thank Anne Beech, David Castle, Robert Webb and Charles Peyton of Pluto Press.
 
Frequently Cited Sources
Nuremberg Tribunal Judgement , 1946 refers to The Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals, 30 September 1946. Page references are to The Judgement of Nuremberg, 1946 (‘uncovered editions’ London: the Stationery Office, 1999). The judgment may also be found reproduced in full as Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals The Avalon Project at Yale Law School < http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judcont.htm >.
Pinochet Judgment refers to Reg. v. Bow Street Magistrate , Ex p. Pinochet (No. 3) (H.L.(E.)) [2000] 1 A.C. 147.
Amnesty Report refers to Amnesty International, NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force , 6 June 2000, AI Index: EUR 70/018/2000 < http://web.amnesty.org/aidoc/aidoc_pdf.nsf/Index/EUR700182000ENGLISH/$File/EUR7001800.pdf >.
ICTY Report refers to Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia , U.N. Doc. PR/P.I.S./510-E (2000), available at < http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/nato061300.htm >.
Nicaragua v. United States of America, 1986 refers to Case Concerning the Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua ( Nicaragua v. United States of America ) (MERITS), Judgment of 27 June 1986, [1986] I.C.J. Rep. 70.
Milosevic Trial Transcript refers to Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic , ‘Kosovo, Croatia And Bosnia Herzegovina’ (IT-02–54) Transcripts < http://www.un.org/icty/index.htm >.
ICTY Press Releases and Press Briefings are archived by date at < www.un.org/ICTY/latest/latestdev-e.htm >.
NATO Morning Briefings and NATO Press Briefings are archived by date at < http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press.htm >.
Security Council Resolutions are archived by year and number at < http://www.un.org/documents/scres.htm >.
 
Part I
Illegal Wars/Collateral Damage
 
1
Iraq 2003
America’s war on Iraq in 2003 was its third illegal war in just under four years. Each one was a bloody horror, but the Iraq war distinguished itself both for its bloodiness and for the flagrancy of its illegality. It was virtually certified as illegal by a defeat at the Security Council so unspinnable that President Bush had to back down from his boast to make the members ‘show their cards’ by forcing a vote. 1
The illegality of the Iraq war was not due to some lawyer’s technicality. The reasons for it (explored later in this chapter) were the same as the reasons for the defeat at the Security Council: the failure of the United States to demonstrate one decent moral justification for resort to war, with all the death and destruction that were sure to follow. The United Nations weapons inspections had turned up nothing, and, despite crude attempts by the Americans and the British to discredit the inspectors before the war with phony intelligence – ‘risk assessment enhancement ’ as the American comic strip Doonesbury called it 2 – they themselves would do no better when they scoured the country afterwards. There was admittedly no threat of Iraq attacking the United States or its allies, so there was no plausible claim of self-defense. Those few who believed that the war would be about ‘freeing’ Iraqis were rapidly disabused of this when, with the regime of Saddam Hussein overthrown, the Americans made it clear that the Iraqis would have a hard time ever freeing themselves from the American military occupation. Nor could concern for Iraqi human rights be taken seriously as a motive from a country that had punished Iraqis for twelve years with an inhuman sanctions regime.
And where was the humanity to be found in a war that had destroyed so many human lives? Iraq Body Count, an international research group dedicated to documenting scientifically the Iraqi civilian casualties, estimated the number of those killed in the war and occupation (as of August 2003) at between 6,100 and 7,800, with 20,000 wounded. 3 Most of these people, about 4,100 to 5,200, had been killed during the invasion. A Los Angeles Times survey of Baghdad hospital records counted 1,700 civilians killed in the battle for Baghdad alone. 4 The same records showed 8,000 injured. ‘Injured’ included losing both your arms and suffering deep burns to 35 per cent of your body, not to mention having your father and mother killed, like twelve-year-old Baghdadi Ali Ismail Abbas. While the war deaths of American and UK soldiers were carefully counted at 164, with 569 injured, the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded would probably never be known. 5 Estimates ranged from 2,300 to tens of thousands. 6
The killing didn’t stop with the overthrow of the Iraqi regime. What the Americans called the ‘bitter enders’ immediately started a guerrilla war against the occupation, attacking American soldiers and many other targets daily throughout 2003. American deaths from these attacks – about 200 in the period from 1 May to 1 December – sent shock waves through the US. But about 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the same period, whether as bystanders in the attacks on Americans or in the inevitable counterattacks, or in other violence related to the occupation. Jittery American soldiers shot dead five members of the same family on 13 June, then nine Iraqi police and three civilian bystanders on 12 September, and all five occupants of a farm truck carrying chickens on 11 November. The August truck bomb attacks against United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and a Shia Mosque in Najaf took the lives of over 100 Iraqis, as well as those of UN operations chief Sergio Vieira de Mello and top cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim. When attacks against Americans reached a crescendo in November with the shooting down of four American helicopters and about 70 US combat deaths, America responded with ‘Operation Iron Hammer,’ and the bombing war had essentially re-commenced. ‘This is war,’ said a US Major-General on 19 November. ‘We’re going to use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut.’ 7 On that day and the next, the Americans killed ten Iraqi ‘insurgents,’ and another ten Iraqi