DUCKPOND

The war of terror carries on remorselessly, indifferent to the possibility of international law. The harsh sentences of the Nuremberg Trials seem in retrospect to be victor’s justice. There is, at least in the minds of the US military, no immediate end in sight and implicitly the belief that somehow peace can be constructed without including the process of justice.

Consider the views of David Rodriguez, former commander of the US Nato forces in Afghanistan. When asked how long it would take to create lasting stability in Afghanistan, Rodriguez replied:

“In some way, shape or form … I think it’s a generation.”

A well defined military objective it might be suggested. He further explained:

“Everything is interrelated,” he said in an interview at his headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“There’s no separation in the minds of the people out there,” Rodriguez said. “It’s the opportunities they have, it’s the security they have and it’s the ability to provide for their children.”

Perhaps it was not the Americans, but who knows, in retaliation for the attack on the parade ground we get this follow-up. The New York Times reports:

Afghan security forces attacked a house early Wednesday occupied by people suspected of plotting the foiled assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai. Officials said the clash left three militants dead, one of them a woman, and also killed a child. Three intelligence agents were also killed during the attack, according to reports.

Murdering the suspects seems to be the modus operandi of the war of terror.

Juan Cole notes:

The sandstorm continued in Baghdad on Tuesday, and so did the fierce fighting between the US military and the Shiite Mahdi Army (paramilitary of the Sadr Movement), leaving 37 dead and 6 US soldiers wounded. The dead were said to include 9 civilians, including 3 women and a child. The sandstorm was an essential context for the fighting, since it prevented the US from deploying helicopter gunships and so left a ground patrol vulnerable to militia attack. The Mahdi Army was apparently attempting to prevent further US wall-building in the Shiite slum. Snipers also shot at US troops from rooftops. It is hard to believe that such complex assaults (involving a combination of ambush, small arms, and roadside bombs) are still going on after 5 years of US military occupation of the capital.

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque shows the consequences of the criminal behavior:

The picture above shows a two-year-old child killed when American forces fired rockets into a heavily populated area of Baghdad’s Sadr City. Pentagon spokesmen said the operation was “force protection;” U.S. forces had come under sniper fire from the neighborhood.

A generation is too long for the criminals responsible for these outcomes to be indicted. There can be no enduring peace without justice, only more war, more suffering and more deaths.

ELSEWHERE:

(Given the title of this post, the Possible Related Links are completely hopeless – disappointing, but something not unexpected.)

Ted Rall, at CommonDreams, suggest “Arrest Bush”. Does that mean that he still believes that American Federal Law is not so corrupted that that is a possibility? Where a national system of law breaks down or does not exist, then international law should fill the gap.

Rupert Cornwall, in The Independent, argues that the last Nazis should be hunted down despite their now advanced ages.