The guest writer is Kim Swift who has worked with the post 2012 Justice Party and cooperated with the New Progressive Alliance.
Bernie Sanders is another pawn of the military industrial complex, another servant of empire and interventionist wars, another war criminal of the duopoly of power in Washington of the Democrats and Republicans.
Bernie Sanders supported the bombing of Serbia in 1999, a criminal war of aggression under President Bill Clinton. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes.
Bernie Sanders says he will continue the illegal and immoral drone assassinations. (1) The Justice Party has spoken against the drone killings since 2012.
“These drones, you might as well just call them assassination machines. That is what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.” -- Retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright to Democracy Now
"There is incredible danger in allowing US military and civilians to murder people anywhere in the world with no public or Congressional or judicial oversight. This authorizes the President and the executive branch, according to the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
The use of drones to assassinate people violates US and international law in multiple ways. US military and civilian employees, who plan, target and execute people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are violating the law and, ultimately, risk prosecution. As the technology for drone attacks spreads, protests by the US that drone attacks by others are illegal will sound quite hollow. Continuation of flagrantly illegal drone attacks by the US also risks justifying the exact same actions, taken by others, against us." (2)
Drone killings violate at least the following articles of the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights .
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offense on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offense was committed.
Ralph Nader on Democracy Now! (3) (4)
“[President Obama has] expanded [empire], and he’s basically broken every international law relating to national sovereignties. He’s broken some of the Geneva Conventions, all of which the U.S. is a signatory to, U.N. Charter. No wars are permitted under international law in the U.N. Charter, unless they’re for strictly defensive purposes. And obviously, we attacked Iraq. They never threatened us. And we’re attacking all kinds of other areas around the world.
What are we getting for it? We’re getting the massive proliferation of violent groups, offshoots and sub-offshoots of al-Qaeda. There are so many of these groups in Africa and Asia spreading, Southeast Asia, that the Pentagon is having trouble indexing them. But they have all this—kill list, of course, every Tuesday in the White House. And what people in this country don’t understand is that the drones may take a few dozen lives here and a few dozen lives there, but when you’re living—when millions of people in Asia and Africa are living under drones, they hear that whine 24 hours a day, it’s terror, it’s horror. They don’t know whether their homes are going to be blown up from this lightning bolt from the sky. And then we wonder why people are hating us and want to do us in.
And it’s only a matter of time. As we push these fighters to become more skilled, more bold, greater in numbers, it’s only a matter of time when the suicide belts are coming to this country. And our country is totally unable to withstand preservation of its civil liberties and democracy with these attacks. And the whole process of democratic processes, allocation of public budgets, will be completely turned upside down in this country with a couple violent terrorist attacks.”
Bernie Sanders supported the bombing of Serbia in 1999, a criminal war of aggression under President Bill Clinton. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes.
“Nato’s Barbarism” by James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-1992) (5)
“To their everlasting shame, our Nato leaders have chosen war over peace in Kosovo. They have abandoned diplomacy in favour of bloodshed. They have taken us back to the Cold War and the arms race. They have smashed the framework of world security. They have guaranteed that we will start the new century as we did this one, with killing and carnage. They have left us with a terrible legacy. With six months to go before the millennium, they have taken us back to barbarism.”
“When Clinton Lied, Yugoslavia Died” by Gary Swing, Boiling Frog Party candidate for U. S. Senate from Colorado (6)
“From March 24 to June 10, 1999, U.S. led NATO military forces dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on Yugoslavia. NATO bombed television stations, factories, power plants, gas, oil, and water supplies, sewage treatment plants, public housing, refineries, warehouses, agricultural facilities, roads, bridges, railways, daycare centers, hospitals, more than 200 schools, and a convoy of Albanian refugees. NATO commander Wesley Clark said the aim of the air war was to ‘demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure’ of Yugoslavia.
The U.S. dropped cluster bombs on Yugoslavia and exposed millions of people to depleted uranium. Unexploded cluster bombs scatter as land mines that blast apart children who pick them up. Depleted uranium weapons spread cancer-causing radioactive contamination that lasts for billions of years. NATO used toxic nerve gas, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, and sprays to poison Yugoslav crops. NATO forces devised the technique of bombing a civilian target, waiting fifteen minutes, and then bombing again to kill rescue workers.
NATO attacked Yugoslavia without the consent of any of its own parliaments, violating the NATO treaty, Article One of the U.S. Constitution, the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles.”
“Martin Luther King Jr. and Peace” by Kim Swift (November 11, 1999) (7)
“It is wrong to attack civilians as a method to oppose the regime in power. The tactics of terrorism which attack innocent civilians as a method to pursue an objective are illegal and immoral. The Geneva Conventions outlaw attacking civilians not involved in the armed conflict and include provisions concerning the treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war. NATO violated the Geneva Conventions in attacking civilians and the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia. The international community must strive to hold accountable those people responsible for dropping the cluster bombs on the marketplace in Nis in Yugoslavia, for example. Adhering to the Geneva Conventions means the U.S. and other countries would renounce forever any ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons on cities. It also means the U.S. and other countries would stop using sanctions which essentially target the civilian population as in Iraq.”
“The Rambouillet Accord: Pretext for a War of Aggression” (8)
“The other leading NATO powers have collaborated with the U.S. administration in planning the war of aggression against Yugoslavia, a country that has not threatened any other state. As one example, the German Foreign Ministry, headed by Green Party leader Joschka Fischer, justified Germany’s intervention in Kosovo by references to a ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ occurring in the year prior to March 24, 1999. Yet, intelligence reports from its own Foreign Office, and from various regional Administrative Courts in Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg, Munster, Mainz and elsewhere in Germany, during the year before the start of NATO strikes, repeatedly and amply testify to the lack of any such dire circumstances. (Junge Welt daily newspaper, April 24, 1999).
Moreover, all of the NATO leaders collaborated with the U.S. State Department in blocking any real negotiations at Rambouillet.
In conclusion, the content of the Rambouillet Accord and the conduct of the U.S. and other NATO leaders in the period leading up to March 24, 1999, presents clear evidence of Crimes against Peace, Principle VI, section (i) and (ii) under the Nuremberg Principles.”
Justice Party National Platform: (9)
“Affirm the commitment of the United States to refrain from ever again engaging in a war of aggression as that crime has been prohibited by the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, the United Nations Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles…”
See also “Peace First” section of the Unified Platform of the New Progressive Alliance (10) including “A Legal Framework for Just Military Action” linked from the “Continuous Wars” article.
Footnotes:
1-Bernie Sanders Says He Will Not End Drone Program If Elected President
2- Five Reasons Drone Assassinations are Illegal
4-Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, the TPP "Corporate Coup d'État" & Writing to the White House – Part Two
6-When Clinton Lied, Yugoslavia Died
7- Martin Luther King Jr. and Peace
8-The Rambouillet Accord: Pretext for a War of Aggression
10-New Progressive Alliance Platform
References:
1-Don’t Let These People or Organizations Fool You
2-United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights
4-Bernie Sanders May Not Be a hawk, But He is also Not a Dove
5-Bernie Sanders Says US 'Kill List' Legal, Backs Troops in Syria
