The Nürmburg Standard
The Nürmburg Standard is a position that I like to take whenever the subject of war-crimes or torture are part of a discussion. Eventually, the warhawk will beg sympathy on account of the soldier who is “just doing his duty” or “just following orders,” or some variant on that theme. The fact of the matter is that this defense has been tried before, with little success. Admittedly, my understanding of the Nürmburg Trials comes from a filmstrip or something that I watched in a government indoctrination camp, so bear with me. My understanding of the situation, upon examination of recent (and not-so-recent) events lead me to ideate my Nürmburg Standard, which I most recently I applied to the case of some G.I. sniper who was found not guilty of baiting targets and staging bodies post-mortem in order to justify the killings. Sickening, eh? It is something like this:
It is not morally acceptable to violate a man’s rights simply because someone instructs you to violate those rights.
My Nürmburg Standard is closely approximated by Principle IV of the Nürmburg Principles (which I discovered today!) which states:
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Whichever way you slice it, I believe this is a fairly well-settled legal principle and I’m not just making this shit up. You can’t get away with war crimes just because someone in your government told you to do it. Fast-forward to 2007 and beyond, where the United States government and its contractors have been involved in, stand accused of, or otherwise implicated in a number of incidents that could appropriately be described as war crimes or other crimes against humanity, including but not limited to:
- Snipers baiting targets
- Allegations of an unjustifiable massacre perpetrated by private contractors hired by the government,
- Destroying evidence (i.e., video tapes) of/and/or pertaining to the practice of “waterboarding” and other forbidden interrogative techniques
America cannot pretend to be the vanguard of moral superiority while reducing itself to tactics it has (and continues to) denounce as barbaric. Unfortunately I am not optimistic that the world will be as vigilant in meting out justice to the (no less) guilty among our countrymen.The most recent news-item related to the Nürmburg Standard is the case of a JAG officer Andrew Willaims who has recently resigned in light of these moral conflicts. He refuses to participate any longer in the charade that is the American Empire any longer, and for this I applaud him. I am genuinely thrilled that someone in his position is applying the standard. While addressing Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann (the legal adviser at Gitmo), Williams argues:
Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition…
…General Hartmann, following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.
Correctomundo!
It was not an excuse for anyone at Nürmburg. In fact, it still isn’t an excuse: our government continues to hunt down and deport people found to have been at one time SS men, prison guards, or otherwise employed in a position materially related to the Third Reich’s crimes.
If it is reprehensible for a foreign soldier to beat, humiliate, or torture one of us, it is no less so when the roles are reversed.
The standard applies to everyone, everywhere, at all times.
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