How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity

by Michael Mandel

"Exciting, original, and completely convincing . . . This book is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand how the law really works in international affairs, and it throws a great deal of light on those international affairs themselves." Edward S. Herman "This closely reasoned and carefully documented study is sad and grim, and necessary. Unless its lessons are heeded by citizens of the rich and powerful states, the fate of the world will be left to the whim of those with the guns and the faith to enforce their will." Noam Chomsky They call it "collateral damage," but legally and morally it is really mass murder. In Kosovo, America claimed its war was a "humanitarian intervention," in Afghanistan, "self-defense," and in Iraq, it claimed the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations. Yet each of these wars was illegal according to established rules of international law. According to these rules, illegal wars fall within the category of "supreme international crimes". So how come the war crimes tribunals never manage to turn their sights on America and always wind up putting America's enemies -- "the usual suspects" -- on trial? This new book by renowned scholar Michael Mandel offers a critical account of America's illegal wars and a war crimes system that has granted America's leaders an unjust and dangerous impunity, effectively encouraging their illegal wars and the war crimes that always flow from them.

Genres: Politics, War, Nonfiction, History, United States

320 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A central objective of the war in Kosovo was the overthrow of the United Nations” says Michael Mandel and painstakingly he proves it; finally someone takes the time to cast aside the PR spin and explain to us regular people – what the heck was the war in Kosovo? There was no genocide. The outcome of the war in Kosovo was simply the replacement of the UN Charter with the law of the Jungle. What a great book beloved by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman for it’s ability to give us the necessary tools to see through the corporate generated interference through to the deepest issues facing humanity today which won’t be solved by the present matrix. Among the many cool facts inside: The Soviets backed the reformers in Afghanistan (strongly advancing the cause of women) so what does America do? Support the fundamentalists. “Senator, did you ever explain what you did there to your wife and daughter?” In the Caroline Case of 1841, Daniel Webster defined the acceptable self-defense of America in a letter to the British government. This rule has never been questioned and was brought out at Nuremberg, and in 1986 by the ICC. Look where it is now. Wars like Vietnam were fought for “credibility” and Clinton and Blair have the blood of hundreds of thousand of small children dead on their watch for the same reason - credibility. Merely serve US interest and get a free pass for violence. Note that the only effective national sovereignty in this world left is the United States; we’ve declared the rest outdated. The secret of Humanitarian intervention (aside from the fact that it rarely is Humanitarian) is that it runs only one way - from the strong to the weak. This book crucially explains how it doesn’t matter whether a president runs a war past congress – it also always has to go through the UN. Rogue states such as ours by nature need to marginalize world opinion. The system of International law and the UN were created to protect countries from bad guys like Hitler. International law and the UN today have been disconnected by the US because if the laws of world apply to us, we will have to abide by them. And so as the title suggests, instead we are getting away with murder. After we were threatened with war crimes in the ’89 invasion of Panama the US pulled itself from international law agreements. Pity. Especially when you consider that there would have been no Holocaust if the world had stood up for international law and national sovereignty in 1939. But now the US also constantly violates Articles 48 and 51, the most important rules of the 1977 Protocols. Also look at the law of Bush’s in 2002 just to keep the US totally above the law with the ICC. Note that otherwise illegal weapons like cluster bombs and mines are considered fine for use because we use them and thus we won’t sign the paper. Mandel shows us the dirty secret Curtis LeMay knew: only lost wars are crimes. Imagine putting the Japanese on trial with a straight face after we incinerated over 100,000 humans one night in Tokyo alone with firebombs knowing the outcome before the first bomb dropped. As we see today with white-collar crime, punishments for criminals of the state then (Nuremberg and Tokyo) and now rarely fit the crime. Brilliant important book…

[Khristine Babylonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

good to know the people around the world...

[bunny ᥫ᭡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

nationalism kills