Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Preemptive vs Preventive War
Oregon PeacWorks has a good article on the difference between preemptive and preventive war, a distinction lost on those in our current administration.

Authentic preemptive war has legal sanction, while preventive war, because it is not based on imminent threat, is indistinguishable from outright aggression. Indeed, the precedent for preventive war goes back to the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 where lawyers for the Nazi defendants argued that the German government had a right to go to war in self-defense. These arguments were properly rejected as preposterous at the time, but they bear a striking resemblance to the arguments that neoconservatives in and around the Bush administration are making today. It was the twisted doctrine of preventive war that Nazi Germany invoked when it illegally invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia, which, in turn, led to World War II. The former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, said that waging this type of aggressive war was “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. It is a crime against the peace.”

I find all of the "fascist" rhetoric coming out of the White House telling. It is almost as if they recognize that they, like Hitler, have launched a preventive war which may ultimately result in a far wider conflict. It is my hope that some day we will see the members of this current administration brought up on charges of war crimes before a world court.
Written at 9:21 AM by Lynne.
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