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Until recently, the possibility that top U.S. officials were responsible for war crimes seemed to many Americans nothing but the invidious allegations of a few knee-jerk anti-Americans. But as more and more suppressed photos and documents have been disclosed, and as more and more eyewitness accounts from prisons and battlefields have appeared in the media, American are undergoing an agonizing reappraisal of U.S. actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and more broadly in the war on terror worldwide.
Human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, and the ACLU have filed lawsuits against top US officials for violations of the Geneva Conventions and US anti-torture laws. Amnesty International and numerous religious organizations including the Fellowship of Reconciliation have launched campaigns against torture. Rep. John Conyers, AfterDowningStreet, Cindy Sheehan, and Gold Star Families for Peace have reopened the question of the Iraq invasion as an illegal war of aggression. Independent international tribunals investigating the conduct of the Iraq war have been held in more than 20 countries. Journalists all over the world are producing a steady stream of revelations regarding past, current, and planned future war crimes. But these and diverse similar efforts too often remain separate and scattered initiatives that allow each “abuse” to be treated as an exceptional problem, rather than part of a common pattern.
Coming to terms with possible US involvement in war crimes is necessary both for establishing the accountability of the current leadership of the United States and for defining institutional barriers required to prevent war crimes in the future. At the same time, the nexus of war crimes brings together a wide-ranging coalition of interests, including military officials, mainstream human rights and civil liberties organizations, tradition peace groups, student activists, and government accountability groups.
WAR CRIMES WATCH is a web-based educational project designed to help Americans probe their government’s responsibility for war crimes and their own responsibility for halting them. The objectives of WAR CRIMES WATCH are:
- To educate Americans about the law of war crimes, the accountability of public officials, and the responsibilities of citizens.
- To make known the credible evidence for past, current, and planned future war crimes by the U.S. government.
- To encourage citizen, civil society, and governmental investigation of possible war crime activity and the application of law enforcement procedures to possible violators.
The concept of accountability for war crimes under international law originates in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal at the end of World War II and is incorporated in the Geneva Conventions, but over the past decade it has been greatly expanded and clarified by the UN tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the formation of the International Criminal Court, and its incorporation into national laws like the U.S. War Crimes and Torture Acts. Today there is a body of law that is clearly enough formulated and widely enough accepted to be interpreted by courts based on procedures similar to those used for judging other crimes. Those are the standards by which WAR CRIMES WATCH will judge allegations of American war crimes.
War crimes include planning and initiating wars of aggression, brutality and destruction to civilians, acts of violence against persecuted groups, and torture and prisoner abuse. While these have often been raised as separate, unrelated issues, WAR CRIMES WATCH will, in the tradition of the Nuremberg tribunal, examine such acts as part of a common pattern of abuse.
US government officials have asserted the authority of the President to order torture and to lock up prisoners without due process of law. That assertion represents a usurpation of the rights of Congress, the judiciary, and the American people. The enforcement of laws like the Geneva Convention and the US War Crimes Act is therefore not only a defense of human rights, but an essential means to preserving democratic government and the US Constitution.
WAR CRIMES WATCH regards war crimes not just as an American problem but as a worldwide problem in which people of many countries have been complicit. It will focus on U.S. war crimes because as Americans we bear a special responsibility for the actions of our own country.
WAR CRIMES WATCH is an outgrowth of the book IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY: AMERICAN WAR CRIMES IN IRAQ AND BEYOND (Metropolitan/Holt, 2005) edited by Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith, who serve as its initial steering committee.
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