Sending shameful signals - by James Caroll
After World War II, many Allied leaders, led by Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, assumed that captured Nazis, whose war crimes were evident, should be summarily executed. But others, led especially by US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, understood the importance of dealing with the major criminals according to scrupulous legal procedures. The result was the Nuremberg Tribunals, where the rights of defendants, even those defendants, were affirmed. Those trials, lasting from 1945 to 1949, involving more than 200 accused war criminals, demonstrated the values for which the United States had just fought the brutal war. More than that: In a recovery from brutality, the Nuremberg trials rescued those values.
The opposite has been occurring in Guantanamo Bay.
No comments:
Post a Comment