David Swanson, of War Is A Crime.org, although endorsing, along with almost every serious antiwar journalist and organization, the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, wrote recently: US Presidents Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes and Military Aggressions” Readers in nations bombed, invaded and murderously occupied by America and Americans will sense or suspect a ‘fall guy’ trick to absolve everyone else.

David Swanson, widely read writer of the blog War Is A Crime.org, who, along with almost every serious antiwar journalist and organization, endorses the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com a few days ago wrote a short article entitled: U.S. Presidents should be prosecuted for war crimes and military aggressions.

Overseas readers, especially in nations bombed, invaded and murderously occupied by America and Americans will sense or suspect a ‘fall guy’ trick, for the title scratches the surface American guilt for the crimes against humanity of the United States over at least sixty-three years – if not before WW II as well.

If a president, as Commander-in-Chief of US Armed Forces, ordering the crimes shall be prosecuted, then, more importantly, what of:

– the profiting investors in war whose funding put that war-ordering president in elected office; who funded his reelection; to whom the president is beholden to and follows the war needs of the speculative investment banking elite that chose him in the first place.

– those working in the media who convinced the American public that the crimes of the president were justified and necessary;

– the leaders of organized clergy at all levels that okay-ed homicidal, often genocidal, crimes against humanity and blessed Americans shipping out to commit them (and blessed their corpses upon return;

– the Americans who signed up for military service accepting that they would be sent to kill poor people in their own beloved countries overseas and then while following criminal orders to kill and maim, did not conscientiously object as was right, nor report criminal orders to superiors as was their duty;

– the hundreds of millions Americans who watched videos of the homicidal crimes on TV and approved or disapproved before losing interest and returning to enjoying their day; who paid their taxes without even speaking up and against their use for mass murder in the name of some absurd reason that with the slightest investigation would have been understood to be a criminal falsehood;

the ‘peace organizations’ composed of veterans, many of whom personally carried out these crimes against humanity, and many many more who participated make them possible in two or three dozen poor and vulnerable nations, even now while looking like reformed good guys protesting government policies, not crimes against humanity, and to this day, after dozens of illegal unconstitutional and criminal wars upon bad guys in other peoples countries, refuse to call for the prosecution of the these crimes against humanity of their nation?

David Swanson is a fine writer and well educated. He holds a Master Degree in Philosophy from the University of Virginia. He must be aware of how the Nuremberg Trials were a whitewash of the all the American major corporations and banks that invested in building a prostate low-wage Germany up to #1 military power in collaboration with Nazi industrialists knowing full well of Hitler’s plans for Jews, but also pleased of what Hitler’s plans were for communists and the Soviet Union. In the film Judgement at Nuremberg staring Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster, the Nazi lawyer in his summation, makes it astoundingly clear, as if it was not already, that all these businessmen who made WW II and the Holocaust possible were more guilty than the generals and five media personalities on trial. Profits from WW II made America a superpower:

If these men are found guilty, there are others who went along who also must be found guilty. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Why? Why did we succeed? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich? Did it not hear Hitler’s words broadcast all over the world? Did it not read his intentions in Mein Kampf published in every corner of the world. Where is the responsibility of the Vatican which signed the concord with Hitler in 1933 giving him tremendous prestige? Are we not to find the Vatican guilty? Where is the responsibility of a Royal Chapter of Her Majesty’s government, which said in an open letter to the Los Angeles Times in 1938, [pointing in finger in the air] In1938! ‘In the event of natural disaster we should pray to god to send a man of the strength of mind and will of Hitler.’ Are we not to find Winston Churchill guilty?

Where is the responsibility [voice rising] of those American industrialists, who helped Hitler create his government? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty?

[shouting] No! Your Honor. It is an easy thing to condemn the German people – to speak of a basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power.

[loudly and slowing with emphasis] The whole world is responsible for Hitler’s Germany!

(When Hitler invaded Poland ever major US corporation from GE and GM to ITT, IBM, Coca Coal etc. were joint venturing in Germany. GM, GE, Dupont and ITT actually owning factories building army vehicles and war planes.)

To mention only one distinguished American:

The Head of the Hitler Youth had testified that German translations of Henry Ford’s The International Jew were required reading for all new recruits. Ford was Hitler’s earliest backer and received a decoration from Hitler, who had Henry’s photo on his wall.

It was Ford’s funds (reported to be as high as $70,000) that helped finance Hitler’s failed Bavarian rebellion in Munich. During Hitler’s trial it was discovered that Ford’s associates came in contact with Hitler’s mentor Dietrich Eckart while trying to sell Germany tractors. Eckart asked for financial aid and got it almost immediately from Ford. Four days following Hitler’s release from Landsberg prison, Hitler stayed at the home of a wealthy friend where he received a new copy of Mein Leben und Werk (My Life and Work) by Henry Ford, a book he would revere and read carefully. [1]

In 1928 Ford merged his assets with I.G. Farben, the German chemical cartel, which strengthened the Nazi cause further. Hitler told a Detroit News reporter that he regarded “Henry Ford as my inspiration.” Ford supported Nazis until his position made him treasonous.

To show his appreciation for Ford’s similar hatred toward Jews, Hitler awarded Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a Nazi citation reserved for foreign men of distinction. It was presented to Ford on his 75th birthday in his Dearborn office. The award brought immediate concern from Jewish leaders, which led Ford to say that his acceptance of the medal did not mean he had sympathy for Nazism, and he was a person who was repulsed by anything that bred hate. The same kind of medal was given to the head of IBM (who returned it) and American aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, who was haunted all his life by his pre-war pro Nazi statements. Henry Ford never returned the medal though Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes denounced its acceptance publicly. [1]

Today the most powerful and respected institutions in America are The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Chase Bank. [The Rockefeller Family invested heavily in both world wars and prospered beyond imagination – John Rockefeller’s New Jersey Standard Oil was prosecuted in 1945, for having made a fortune selling oil to Nazi Germany through subsidiaries in South America.]

This writer has no doubt that our colleague Swanson had the best of intentions in calling for the prosecution of presidents, as had been called for before with Bush, Johnson, Nixon and even Truman during the Korean police action, but to no avail.

It could only be a step in the right direction, if David means it as a taking off point for a broader call for indictment of Americans.

There is an atmosphere of pretended and unjustified innocence that seems to pervade the US peace and justice or antiwar movement, which, continually points a finger away from those who are protesting and instead at the very own government of the protesters. Martin Luther King dismissed his government as the greatest purveyor, not cause, but purveyor, of violence in the world, while, in anguish, holding America, Americans, including himself, responsible and not America’s own elected and reelected public servants which he directed not a single word to in his entire sermon Beyond Vietnam.

The more than ten million survivors of American genocide hold all Americans responsible before the law, including protestors of American crimes as if they were merely mistakes in foreign policies. They were not mistakes, and leaders like David, I’m sure will soon stop this kind of misleading exposing of crimes without calling for punishment of all those who commit them.

King held himself and his American audience responsible for being perfectly capable of making these atrocity wars for profit unacceptable and inoperable through non-participation, non-support, non-acquiescence and conscientious objection.

Secondly, the whole US peace movement is flat-out against King’s insisting that the killing must be stopped first. For every bit of attention given to the wars by leading alternate media journalists like David, there are many more articles about every possible injustice being suffered by Americans from other Americans, in spite of Martin Luther King making it thunderously clear that not only for moral reasons but for damned simple logic, Americans killing the poor overseas must be stopped firstly, for “the obvious massive expenditure of human and financial resources makes any progress on social justice at home impossible.” [see Beyond Vietnam a Time to Break Silence, 1967]

Seeking justice for Americans while they kill overseas for that same Wall Street they want a bigger cut from is … what? Anyone! Please tell your writer, who has run out of words. Are there any words to describe this?

But young and talented David Swanson, could realize this, and bring some embarrassing awakening to the American peace movement and journalists that have been exposing crimes from Korea in 1950, to Syria today, that to perceptive people are long sickening apparent. While exposing today’s cruel mass homicide in ever unnecessary detail, forgetting last year’s murders in Libya, forgiving the years’ before genocide in a dozen helpless destroyed nations, and not even calling for their prosecution as crimes against humanity, but rather painting them as mistaken policies of their own elected and reelected government. Better to call crimes against humanity and crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Call a spade a spade openly and loudly, not finagle around with excuses and political commentary.

And let us put a nail in the coffin of the pathetic flimflam and escaping criminal responsibility by laying war crimes blame solely on US presidents as if they were kings, emperors or absolute dictators, and all the rest of America entirely innocent. No, we don’t want to blame everything on one cog in the wheel of corporate governance that Mussolini defined as fascism, a cog that is not all that pivotable, if we peek at the words of the last aristocrat American president of some influence among his wealthy peers. In a letter written to his close friend and confidant Colonel House in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote “You and I know that a financial element in the centers of power has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

Marxist Economics Professor Richard Wolff, lecturing around the country to Peace and Justice groups, tells of FDR managing to convince his wealthy peers, most all of whom were investing in economically prostate Germany’s low-wage labor to build up the Nazi armed forces (while my dad sold apples on a street corner), to accept a 94% tax rate on every dollar above $200,000 to pay for socialist programs like Social Security, Unemployment Compensation and the Federal Government Works Program to put the unemployed to work, OR face a revolution and possible loss of control of the country.

Upon FDR’s death, (from illness or poison as his son James and the Soviets insisted – in either case, propitious for war investment hawks), his policies of rapprochement with the half destroyed USSR and freedom for nations colonially occupied by European colonial powers were reversed and the belligerent stance of racist Prime minister Winston Churchill, who FDR mistrusted and disliked was affirmed in a new US policy of confrontation, enmity, fear of socialism, Cold War and lack of sympathy for an ally’s twenty-seven war dead.

Now can one imagine that wealthy billionaires controlling the super fortunes made in the US corporate domain that made the US the world commanding superpower, for having invested in building a prostate Germany to #1 military power (fully aware of Hitler’s intention regarding European Jews and not at all unhappy with Hitler’s intentions for communists and the Soviet Union), would let an ex-haberdashery salesman and Kansas City Pendergast machine ward heeler who supplanted a dangerously peace minded Vice President Henry Wallace, make personal decisions affecting their trillions of dollars invested in controlling the world? But Americans are told straight talking down-to-earth Harry made personal decisions to drop A bombs on cities of civilians, to back murderous fascist military during war and coup in Greece, to bring the French Colonial Army back into Vietnam in US ships, to create the agencies that now make up the US National Security State, to invade and cut Korea in half and later bomb Korea North and South to smithereens. Does it not make better sense to understand that he was he just following what that “financial element in the centers of power,” the speculative investment community, needed. [2] [3]

And think of all the men of disparate levels of mental capability and social education Wall Street has offered voters one-of-two-choice for that highest political office since the second Roosevelt, the last wealthy patrician president capable of some measure of influence among his peers on ‘The Street.’ Consider that every one of these presidents subsequent to WWII had unseemly ordered, contrary to human nature, crimes against humanity consistent with the history of all commercial, industrial, financial speculative investment banking run white empires of modern history.

Ponder a conscience bitten Ike in the last hour of his presidency warning against the “undue influence of the Military Industrial Complex (that had ‘advised’ him to murderously and mercilessly overthrow the first popularly elected president of Guatemala, leading to decades of massacres that only this month were prosecuted in Guatemala as genocide; ‘advised’ Ike to have the CIA also arrange the assassination of the popular Patrice Lumumba, first elected president of an independent Republic of Congo, and impose a brutal dictator General Mobutu initiating loss of life in the millions that has not yet ceased as fellow European empires continue to make sure of the instability that enables their continued colonial plundering of the richest natural resources in Africa; ‘advised’ him to begin the senseless bombing of little Laos, which would become the most bombed country in history; ‘advised’ him to threaten a North Korea, already bombed flat, with atomic bombing and run test flights of nuclear armed planes over this half of the Korea, which Wall Street had had the Department of State use the US Army to disband its first all-Korean-peninsula government since it had ‘advised’ Teddy Roosevelt to award Korea to half-brother empire Japan for a forty year occupation in return for Japanese recognition of the US claiming possession of the Philippines as American territory).

Learned Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT, America’s touted number one intellectual, has said over and over again, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” but Chomsky has also said and is quoted on the educational website Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity NowAmerica must prosecute her own war criminals.” In Chomsky’s more than a hundred books on the subjects he has made it abundantly clear that US presidents are not the principle men behind America’s crimes against humanity. We will count on David Swanson to take this into consideration to make sure that when he tells us “U.S. Presidents should be prosecuted for war crimes and military aggressions,” that we understand that it does not mean exoneration for:


 – the profiting investors in war whose funding put that war-ordering president in elected office; who funded his reelection; to whom the president is beholden to and follows the war needs of the speculative investment banking elite that chose him in the first place.

– those working in the media who convinced the American public that the crimes of the president were justified and necessary;

– the leaders of organized clergy at all levels that okay-ed homicidal, often genocidal, crimes against humanity and blessed Americans shipping out to commit them (and blessed their corpses upon return;

– the Americans who signed up for military service accepting that they would be sent to kill poor people in their own beloved countries overseas and then while following criminal orders to kill and maim, did not conscientiously object as was right, nor report criminal orders to superiors as was their duty;

– the hundreds of millions Americans who watched videos of the homicidal crimes on TV and approved or disapproved before losing interest and returning to enjoying their day, who paid their taxes without even speaking up and against their use for mass murder in the name of some absurd reason that with the slightest investigation would have been understood to be a criminal falsehood;

– the ‘peace organizations’ composed of veterans, many of whom personally carried out these crimes against humanity, and many many more who participated make them possible in two or three dozen poor and vulnerable nations, even now while looking like reformed good guys protesting government policies, not crimes against humanity, and to this day, after dozens of illegal unconstitutional and criminal wars upon bad guys in other peoples countries, refuse to call for the prosecution of the these crimes against humanity of their nation?

Footnotes

1

Sources: Levitas, Daniel, The Terrorist Next Door, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2002.

Cronen, Isaac. Confronting Fear, Thunder’s Mouth, New York, 2002.

Sutton, Antony. Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, chapter 6, http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street.

Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews, Public Affairs, New York, 2001.

footnote

2

Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, New York Times, James Bradley, 12/5/2009. See also the

Taft-Katsura Agreement. [

3

The Unknown Truth About Korea: U.S. Sanctioned Death Squads and War Crimes, 1945-1953, S Brian Willson. [↩]

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Dissident Voice, Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times; Ta Kung Bao; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America; OpEdNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: and website historian of Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining. Studied history at CCNY, Columbia U., U. Puerto Rico, Dolmetscher Institut München, Germany.

(Musician grassroots activist dedicated firstly to ending colonial power “genocide in maintenance of unjust predatory investments,” [Martin Luther King Jr.])

Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *