Andrew Greeley: Why Are There No War Crimes Trials?

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/05/4344/

Why Are There No War Crimes Trials?
by Andrew Greeley

I’ve watched two episodes of Ken Burns’ “The War.” I don’t think I’ll watch any more. It was young men of my generation who fought those battles. The kids killed on Guadalcanal or storming Monte Cassino were only a couple years older than I was. Nor will I read the late David Halberstam’s book The Coldest Winter about Korea. My friends died in that winter cold. War is inherently ugly, destructive, horrible. The lives of young men are cut short. Parents, spouses, friends, children are marked for life by the losses they suffered. It is astonishing that despite the four wars of the last half century, we Americans do not remember the horror. Instead we blunder into new wars, blithely confident that it will be easy, short and almost bloodless. We are always mistaken. Perhaps we don’t want to remember.

snip//


There is no question that the war that Burns so brilliantly brings back was necessary. However, even in necessary wars, stupid and evil things happen. Not all the killing is necessary, but it is in the nature of war that evil is often done in the name of good and the innocent suffer without reason. Inept and publicity-hungry commanders like Mark Clark and Douglas MacArthur make terrible mistakes. Civilians are killed randomly and recklessly as in the RAF night raids on German cities. Individual human life is cheap. Angry soldiers kill prisoners. Pilots kill parachutists. Americans drop atomic bombs. Killing other human beings becomes routine.

Obviously there is a subtext to the TV series: If that war was the most terrible ever and yet was necessary, what about the subsequent wars and the present war? It is, I suspect, the reason that the Journal’s critic is so measured in her approval.

Why was it necessary to invade Iraq? Because they attacked us? But they did not. Most of the 9/11 killers were in fact Saudis. Because they had weapons that might kill us? It turns out that they did not. Why is it necessary to continue this pointless, never-ending war? For the sake of democracy in Iraq? For victory? Because the president says it’s the “right thing” to do? So that a future president will be blamed for “weakness?”

And I think of that young woman in St. Angela Church in 1943 and of similar young women today and wonder why we don’t have war crimes trials for unnecessary wars.


Andrew Greeley is a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago for 52 years, a columnist for 40 years, a sociologist for 45 years, a novelist for 28 years, distinguished lecturer at the University of Arizona for 28, research associate at National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for 46 years.