To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Robert H. Jackson, Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
As we mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two, we should ponder very carefully Robert Jackson's words.
I hate war, but I am not a pacifist. I would defend World War Two, and the military action taken against the Third Reich and its allies for the very same reasons that I opposed the Iraq war and the NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Hitler had to be stopped not because he was a dictator, but because of the way he arrogantly over-rode the sovereignty of other European countries and his contempt for international law. But in 1999 it was the NATO powers who were the illegal aggressors against Yugoslavia, and in 2003 it was the US-led coalition which attacked Iraq.
Attacking and invading other countries is wrong. Period. In international affairs the true heirs of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are the neocons who share the little man's arrogant disregard for national sovereignty and his utter contempt for international law. And in the same way that the Nazis were brought to book at Nuremburg for committing the 'supreme international crime', of launching a war of aggression, let's hope that one day the neocon warmongers- (who at this very moment are doing all they can to propagandise for yet more aggression- this time against Iran), are also held to account for their crimes.
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