Part III: keynote address - International Justice, War Crimes, and Terrorism: The U.S. Record - Transcript

Social Research, Winter, 2002

International Justice, War Crimes, and Terrorism

THE topics addressed in this volume--international justice, war crimes, and terrorism--are among the most important that mankind faces in the twenty-first century. They are also topics that make us uncomfortable precisely because they are often ethically ambiguous. The September 11 suicide mass murders that focused Americans' minds on the random, immoral, and destructive violence of terrorism were not ethically ambiguous. As a result they moved the question of how to prevent such attacks to the top of our domestic and foreign policy agendas.

The solutions, however, are not as obvious as we wish and they will not be found merely in painful reexaminations of United States actions in the past. Last spring, when I chose to make public the details of a military operation I led during the Vietnam War that ended with the death of innocents, I said I hoped to turn this story into "an educational moment." Unfortunately that was not to be. It became another hot current event to be argued ferociously until the next hot event came along, and was then quickly forgotten.

This conference is a result of the promise I made when hope for an educational moment was still alive. To be clear: I do not intend to meekly submit to cross-examinations or self-indulgent, one-sided criticism of United States foreign policy during the war in Vietnam. Open and honest evaluation of America's conduct during that war and other wars has led to substantial improvement in our military training and behavior as well as our attitude toward becoming involved in the affairs of others.

In any discussion about America's conduct in war, it is best to remember our tendency to withdraw from the world, especially after a terrible military experience. We withdrew after experiencing the horror and slaughter of the first great war of the twentieth century. We stacked our arms, downsized our military, and attempted to return to normal. We refused to ratify the treaty creating the League of Nations. We enacted restrictive, racist immigration laws. The Great War may not have been the war to end all wars but Americans were unambiguously and ethically determined that it would be the last European war with which we would be involved.

When the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany on January 31, 1933, the head of this university, Alvin Johnson, knew that intellectuals, and Jewish intellectuals in particular, were in trouble. He began an effort to raise the money to provide a refuge--a University in Exile--that became one of the great moral acts in the history of American higher education. And lest we forget, it was not a decision fully embraced by public opinion. Americans steadfastly resisted getting involved. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to resort to the Lend Lease Act of 1941 to provide assistance. It was not until we were attacked on December 7, 1941, and Germany declared war on us, that we mobilized and entered the conflict.

After the Second World War, the American people chose a more international course. The United Nations, the Bretton Woods agreements, NATO, and the Marshall Plan stand as monuments to our understanding of how the world's peace and security depend upon our not yielding to isolationist impulses. Still, we slashed our defense spending and were able to provide relief to Europe only because of presidential determination and the reputation of General George Marshall. We certainly did not send billions to rebuild those war-shattered lands because of overwhelming public support. As a child, I remember angry sentiment against the effort.

The Korean War is an even more striking example of what can happen when the United States disengages following a terrible and bloody war. North Korea's invasion of South Korea occurred after we withdrew much of the Seventh Army from the peninsula and after our secretary of state indicated that South Korea was not a strategic interest of the United States. Even after the invasion, President Harry S. Truman did not have enough public support to ask Congress for either a declaration of war or involuntary conscription. Public support for the war evaporated in short order along with Truman's chances for reelection. No doubt this memory contributed to our unwillingness to act to prevent Soviet troops from entering Hungary in 1956.

I cite this history at the beginning of this paper because America has not always covered itself in glory during the great ethical challenges of the past--not just in the way it has conducted itself in war, but by how it has conducted itself in avoiding war. Proudly citing our superiority in opposing some specific war encourages us to forget how our ethical preference for pacifism and neutrality in 1938, 1939, and 1940 became the greatest of all ethical disasters.

In the papers in this volume on the concept of a just and therefore legal, we have been reminded how difficult and important it is to morally justify what must be done in any war, even one that is fought by combatants who follow the Geneva Conventions to the letter. To wage a war we must train our youth to use violent and deadly means to defeat an enemy force that has been organized against it. Killing is the business of war.