U.S. heads of state have no immunity from responsibility for aggressive war.

Matthew 26:52 Jesus said "for all those who take the sword will die by the sword."

WWII was an unprecedented crime as millions of civilians were murdered, wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, raped, robbed and entire civilian cities and towns were destroyed.  In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the world was faced with the challenge of how to seek justice for an almost unimaginable scale of criminal behavior. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) held at Nuremberg, Germany, attempted to broach this immense challenge on a legal basis.  It was because of this trial that the United Nations was formed.  The UN Charter was drafted directly from the judicial rulings of this military tribunal.  The criminal charges of; crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war of aggression and war crimes were all made into law as a direct result of the Nuremberg trial.  The purpose of making these laws was an attempt by man to outlaw war and all its atrocities.  To never again go to war and to severely punish all those who plan for, prepare for, initiate and engage in war.

In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace, in Principle VI, specifically Principle VI(a), submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, as

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

The chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The Nuremberg trial unanimously declared that there is absolutely no need, cause or justification for anyone to start a war. We are after all civilized human beings. Any international incident can be resolved peacefully. Those who start wars are nothing more than criminals with a criminal intent to cause the death of another human being.

The Nuremberg trial established that the most effective course of action to end any war or even prevent a war is to go after the person or persons who gave the order to attack another country.  No person has the authority to launch a war against another.  If a leader of one country decides to go to war with another country that leader is committing crimes that include; war of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, murder, torture and other deplorable war crimes.

The Nuremberg tribunals were the first international courts established to try crimes against international law, and they firmly established the responsibility of individuals, at whatever level they participate in atrocities, as well as denying immunity to political leaders. Article 7 of the Charter expressly rejected sovereign immunity for military and political leaders: “The official position of defendants, whether as heads of state or responsible officials in government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.”

United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the Nuremberg Prosecutor, opened his case with a proclamation that the privileges attaching in international law to the State should never again shield human beings from retribution for their own wickedness, at least before an international court:

These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders…. The idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes are always committed only by persons…. t is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal immunity…. Modern civilisation puts unlimited weapons of destruction in the hands of men. It cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal irresponsibility.

It was the judgment at Nuremberg which heralded the removal of the shield of state sovereignty for crimes against humanity:

It was submitted that … where the act in question is an act of state, those who carry it out are not personally responsible, but are protected by the doctrine of the sovereignty of the state. In the opinion of the tribunal (this contention) must be rejected…. Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced…. [T]he principle of international law, which under certain circumstances protects the representative of the state, cannot be applied to acts which are condemned as criminal by international law. The authors of these acts cannot shelter themselves behind their official position in order to be freed from punishment in appropriate proceedings.

How to end any war

In the game of chess the objective is to remove your opponent’s king in as few moves as possible. The object of the game is to checkmate your opponent’s king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in “check”) and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move. The game is over as soon as you capture your opponent’s king and your opponent surrenders to you. All wars can be ended quickly simply by applying the game of chess to your country’s self-defense strategy. Defend your people by taking the course of action that will quickly capture and remove your opponent’s leadership.

International law and domestic law allow lethal force to be used in self-defense against armed attacks. There’s no special protection given to heads of state that protects them from the otherwise lawful use of lethal force in self-defense. Nuremberg established that heads of state have no immunity from responsibility for aggressive war. There’s no logical legal principle that says it’s better to spare the life of a country’s leader, when he or she is the head war criminal who started the war, and killed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent people.

Any uniformed member of the Military is a lawful target under the laws of armed conflict. If he is the head policy maker (commander-in-chief, prime minister, president, emperor, chancellor, king or queen) in deciding to launch an aggressive war, then he’s committing an international crime; denying him any right to the kind of protection we give hospital workers or Red Cross workers or the like. If we want to deter aggression, we have to extract a cost from those who are making the decisions. A warmongering leader is not willing to put his own safety at risk, and so it’s very important that we make it clear that we have the legal right to go after even heads of state engaged in massive international aggression.

The only logical and legal course of action to defend ones country and countrymen from an unlawful military attack from another country is to hold the person or persons who gave the order to attack, accountable for their criminal acts. Instead of retaliating against the people of the country whose leader ordered the attack on your country and countrymen one should only attack those leaders who gave the order. No one else should suffer or pay for the crimes of the war leaders. Only the leaders who order their country to attack and murder the people of another country should suffer and pay with their lives. The Nuremberg Trial established “Legal Self-Defense” against wars of aggression, kidnappings, torture and acts of aggression against another state.

The legal, honorable and patriotic course of action to end illegal wars is to target only those criminal leaders. Every country and its people has the legal right to self-defense and their legal rights include only attacks against the criminal leadership, never against innocent and defenseless civilians. As soon as the leader or leaders who gave the order to attack and kill your people are eliminated then the war will end. If someone takes over command of the military forces after the war leaders are eliminated and they too order more attacks against you, your country and your people, then they too are legal and legitimate targets.

Infiltrating your enemy’s country and attacking only the leadership will end the war quickly and deter future leaders from ordering their people to attack and kill another.

Had the Allied nations succeeded in killing Adolf Hitler at the beginning of WWII the War would have ended a lot sooner and millions of lives would have been spared. A war that needlessly killed 23,100,000 Soviets, 449,800 English, 418,500 US, 5,600,000 Polish, 2,700,000 Japanese, 7,233,000 Germans, 567,600 French, 20,000,000 Chinese, 45,300 Canadians .. for an estimated death toll of roughly 72 million. If a team of snipers had been sent into Germany from occupied France, from the United States, from England, from Poland, from the Soviet Union or from any one of the German occupied European states, with the sole mission of killing Adolf Hilter then World War II would have ended a lot sooner and tens of millions of lives would have been saved.

The Taliban and the Afghan people had and continues to have the legal right to self-defense. Their legal rights includes the use of lethal force against the criminal leadership of the United States government – George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Robert Gates, and Leon Panetta, for ordering and commanding the illegal attack against Afghanistan and the Afghan people. The Iraqi people also have the legal right to self-defense against the unlawful armed attack against their country.

The Libyan people now have the legal right to self-defense against the unlawful armed attacks against their country.  International law and domestic law allows the Afghan, Iraqi and Libyan people to use lethal force in self-defense against the US government’s armed attacks against their countries. Nuremberg (a tribunal held after the end of World War II, where the United States, England and the Soviet Union tried top Nazi German officials for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) established that heads of state (including United States heads of state) have no immunity from responsibility for aggressive war.

The United States Chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson, wrote:

“We will show these men to be the living symbols of racial hatred, terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.”

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization can not tolerate their being ignored, because it can not survive their being repeated.”

“I am convinced that we have an opportunity to bring to a just judgement those who have thought it safe to wage aggressive and ruthless war.”

One shot can end any war.

It does not matter how powerful a country might be. It would not matter if the aggressor had the most technologically advanced fighter jets, bombers, tank, or warships, once a sniper is able to infiltrate the aggressor’s country there is nowhere to hide.  No country can stop an invisible army of snipers. There is no defense against an army of snipers.  A good sniper could gain entry as a diplomat, tourist or business person. A good sniper would not need to smuggle in his or her weapon as he or she would have been trained to use the weapon of choice of the aggressive nation and acquire their weapon from the aggressive nation’s own police and military or even from citizens with hunting rifles. It took 3 weeks for the US law enforcement agencies to find and capture the Beltway sniper in October 2002 in Washington, D.C. How long would it take to find a team of highly trained and motivated snipers? That is if you even knew they were already in country.

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