What movie?

I still question the "legality" of Nuremberg.

I know that makes me sound like a Nazi sympathizer or something, but I'm not at all. The questions raised about the trials at Nuremberg are as glaring today as they were in November of 1945.

Many of the charges levelled against the Nazi leadership were not "crimes" prior to November 20th, 1945, and thus the men on trial couldn't have knowingly committed crimes that didn't exist. Again, I'm not saying there wasn't culpability on the part of the Nazi leadership... there was, indeed... but the capital crimes they were accused of had never been codified prior to the end of WWII.

Furthermore, as pointed out by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Harlan Stone, the Allies were "guilty" of many of the same things that the Germans were being accused of. France had a notoriously bad record of POW abuse after the war, but it paled in comparison to what the Soviets were doing. All the Allied Powers waged war against civilian targets at some time during the course of the conflict (Curtis LeMay's fire-bombing campaign, for example), yet that was a leading crime in all the Nuremberg convictions.

In Iraq, we rounded up and arrested those "most wanted" from the leadership of the Ba'athist regime... but they were prosecuted, tried and defended, found guilty and executed by Iraqis... not by nations that had been attacked, wronged or threatened by Saddam and his cronies. Its difficult to say whether or not Saddam got his "fair trial"... I know he didn't think he did... but no one can accuse the US or UK of holding a "show trial" to blame Saddam (and by extention, Iraq) for wrongs and injustices.

What more can we hope to accomplish than that? If the day comes when Osama bin Laden is actually captured alive, who will judge him? Should it be a US judge? A panel of judges from nations bin Laden attacked? Or should it be the Afghani people that Osama brought so much pain and suffering down on by associating with the Taliban? Surely no one would suggest he go back to his native Saudi Arabia for trial... can you imagine that? My God, he'd be out in a year... probably with a check from the Saudi royal family, too.

I think our "responsibility" to Iraq and Afghanistan ends with our assitance in building a stable and secure government that can handle the process of legal justice by itself. Our doing it for someone is never a good idea...