AMERICAN NUREMBERG

Reviewed 8/28/2016

Access to this book courtesy of the

AMERICAN NUREMBERG The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes Rebecca Gordon New York: Skyhorse Publishing, April 2016				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN-13 978-1-5107-0338-9
ISBN-10 1-5107-0333-0	215pp.	HC	$21.99

"Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example." 1

– G. W. Bush, June or July 2003, in a speech honoring the
UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

In reviewing Joseph Margulies's book on Guantánamo, I noted that President George W. Bush set a juggernaut in motion when he declared war on "terror".2

The November 2014 release of the Senate Select Committee report, and the CIA response asserting that torture saved American lives, showed us that the juggernaut lumbers on. This year, with the publication of Rebecca Gordon's book, we learn that the juggernaut still faces no significant obstruction. President Obama issued executive orders forbidding the use of torture and closing the so-called black sites, but Ms. Gordon writes that torture may continue at a black site in Mogadishu, operated by the CIA in conjunction with Somalia's government.

In addition to continuing Bush's policies, President Obama has expanded the drone program and killed considerable numbers of innocent people.

It is clear that Ms. Gordon's heart is in the right place. However, I fault her account for some discrepancies. On page 6, she writes of Stalin instigating the Nuremberg Trials, while on page 17 she describes him as bloodthirsty.

The Original Nuremberg Trials

At the end of World War II, farsighted leaders understood the need for an unimpeachable condemnation of the Third Reich's atrocities — one that represented standards of justice endorsed by the whole community of nations, rather than revenge on behalf of the Allied Powers. Representatives of those governments came forward to define laws governing crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and to assert universal jurisdiction for their enforcement. These new concepts were controversial, but history has deemed the Nuremberg Trials a success. The United Nations commissioned The Nuremberg Principles which were adopted in 1950 and led to the creation of the International Criminal Court.3

Ironically, it was Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin who insisted on trials for accused Nazi war criminals, arguing that such procedures were necessary to establish a sense of legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

– Page 6

At a conference of allies held in Tehran during the war, Joseph Stalin is said to have raised a toast to the prospect of trying and then quickly shooting 50,000 Nazi war criminals. Winston Churchill was reportedly horrified...

– Page 17

It's quite possible that there's no contradiction, but Ms. Gordon doesn't make a convincing case, and since these are trivial details, they were best left out.

A more significant discrepancy is her treatment of whether the so-called "black sites" continue to operate. On page 151 she writes, "Although President Obama ordered all the agency's black sites closed when he took office in 2009, the CIA continues to run at least one interrogation center." Then on page 159 I find: "Finally, we know almost nothing about who is being held in secret sites like the one the CIA operates jointly with Somali forces, or that JSOC may well be operating in any of the 'fifty to sixty countries' where Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told CBS News in 2001that al Qaeda and other 'networks of terrorists' are active." While the CIA site in Mogadishu is well documented, her discussion about the JSOC sites this smacks of innuendo. Are we supposed to believe that "fifty or sixty" sites are still open despite the president's order?

Those defects aside, this is an excellent book. It gives us a good overview of the Nuremberg Trials, thoroughly documents a number of outrages that occurred at Guantánamo and during President Obama's drone program, and makes reasonable suggestions for reform. The writing is solid, the research is thorough, there are few errors of grammar or fact. The bibliography contains 37 entries. (I would have preferred a few more.) I recommend it highly.

1 The Washington Post story reporting this also noted that Scott McClellan said all prisoners being held by the U.S. government were being treated "humanely." (See page 111.) As this book shows us in gruesome detail, McClellan's statement is untrue for any reasonable definition of "humane."

2 Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power

3 The ICC is an independent body, not part of the United Nations. It did not enter into force until 2002; by 2015, 123 nations were members. The United States signed but never ratified the treaty making it a member, and in 2002 George W. Bush formally withdrew that signature.

Errata for American Nuremberg