

Memorial Day will someday mean a double mourning, a mourning for the violent deaths suffered by millions of American military and a much more agonizing mourning for the deaths, maiming, destruction and suffering these Americans in uniform brought to millions of innocent men, women and children by committing crimes against humanity in their own beloved countries for the lies of their government and media.

Regarding any order to invade and/or kill in another country: “An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders — if the order was illegal.

“I was only following orders,” has been unsuccessfully used as a legal defense in hundreds of cases (probably most notably by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg tribunals following World War II). The defense didn’t work for them, nor has it worked in hundreds of cases since.

Here below copied are the very clear Nuremberg Principles of International Law, which former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark unequivocally states are part of the law of the land by Article Six of the US Constitution.

Principle I

“Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.”

Principle II

“The fact that an internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.”

Principle III

“The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”

This paraphrases to, “even if you are head of state you still can be tried under international law.”

Principle IV

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”.

This principle could be paraphrased as follows: “It is not an acceptable excuse to say ‘I was just following my superior’s orders'”.

Principle V

“Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.”

Principle VI “The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes Against Peace:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(c) Crimes Against Humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population,

Principle VII

“Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace … or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

Memorial Day 2017, like Memorial Days over the last sixty odd years, have been used to herald US invasions, bombings and military occupations as fighting for freedom to distract from the horrific truth of continuing US crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide in more than a dozen smaller nations.

Regarding what US GI’s did to the soft spoken Buddhist Vietnamese, the United States of America dropped more than twice the amount of bombs on them that were dropped during all of the Second World War in Europe, Asia and Africa by all sides. This was after the US government first brought back in the formerly fascist French Colonial Army in US ships, and financially supported their attempt to recolonize Vietnam for eight bloody years. (Vichy France had turned its colony over to the Japanese during WWII.)

Martin Luther King cried out one year before his assassination:

They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps…. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs… So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers… They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords…What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? …We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing — in the crushing of the nation’s unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

How many African American veterans would continue to wear proudly their I am Vietnam Veteran caps if they read or listened to the video of King’s sermon “Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break Silence,” which has been blacked out of US monopoly media since 1967?

The reason six US Presidents and US mainstream media gave for the many millions of deaths in French Indochina was seeking to prevent a communist government in Vietnam, but in spite of all the six or seven million deaths, maiming, and malformed births throughout Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam has had ever since a communist government and is, presently, like the Chinese communist government, a favorite trading partner of the United States of America. How do the families of fallen American GIs who know this feel about their sons and daughters having given their lives for this abject failure of the US government and military in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Iraq which took the lives of so many innocent millions and achieving nothing but death and destruction.

Regarding what American servicemen and women accomplished in Iraq, namely the taking of more than a million lives, many of which were children, we recall a TV interview of President Bush, jokingly peering under his desk for the missing weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was accused of having as a reason for invading that prosperous oil rich nation which provided good health care to its citizens, and presently is a destroyed country. No compensation, indemnity, reparations were ever given, not even an apology.

Indian writer Arundhati Roy captured the humanity of the victims of US militarism:

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq — mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods — are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.

Not during this year, nor during most probably many years to follow, but in some future year, when the economic power of the USA wanes and China and other formerly victimized nations supplant the USA as more influential, will law be restored. And because there is no statute of time limitations for aggression and genocide, the USA, Europe and the UN Secretariat should be sued for reparations in such mega colossal amounts that Wall Street investments in past illegal and unconstitutional use of US Armed Forces will turn out to have been worse than just unprofitable.