Co-authored with Jonathan D. Greenberg, Scholar in Residence at The Daniel Gould Center of Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School.
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1.Ten weeks ago, in early October, as war crimes and mass atrocities against civilians in Aleppo intensified, humanitarian organizations and individuals of conscience called out in warning.
A global coalition of 223 civil society organizations, including Amnesty International, Care International, Human Rights Watch, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Physicians for Human Rights, Save the Children, and the Syrian Relief Network issued a joint statement:
"The UN Security Council has failed Syrians. In almost six years of conflict, close to half a million people have been killed and eleven million have been forced to leave their homes. Most recently, the Syrian and Russian governments and their allies have carried out unlawful attacks on eastern Aleppo with scant regard for some 250,000 civilians trapped there. Armed opposition groups have also fired mortars and other projectiles into civilian neighbourhoods of western Aleppo, though according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 'indiscriminate airstrikes across the eastern part of the city by Government forces and their allies are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties.' Efforts to stop these atrocities and hold those responsible to account have been blocked repeatedly by Russia, which continues to misuse its veto power in the Security Council."
The organizations "urgently call upon UN member states to step in and request an Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly to demand an end to all unlawful attacks in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria, and immediate and unhindered humanitarian access so that life-saving aid can reach all those in need." https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/01/uniting-peace-syria-global-civil-society-appeal-un-member-states
Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, warned that "the whole of eastern Aleppo could be destroyed by Christmas if the 'cruel, constant' Russian-backed bombing continues." The scale of human tragedy in the besieged areas of Aleppo was already overwhelming, and it could become much worse. He called on the world to avert "another Srebrenica, another Rwanda." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/aleppo-could-be-destroyed-by-christmas-warns-un-envoy-for-syria Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned the slaughter, and demanded accountability from its perpetrators.
He said that "crimes of historic proportions" were committed, and that ""Indiscriminate airstrikes across the eastern part of the city by government forces and their allies are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties." http://www.npr.org/2016/12/17/505893462/they-said-never-again Specifically, Zeid called for Russia and Syria to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the bombardment of civilians in Aleppo. A referral to the International Criminal Court, he said, "would be more than justified given the rampant and deeply shocking impunity that has characterized the conflict and the magnitude of the crimes that have been committed..."
As reported by Reuters, "Zeid said Syria's government and its allies attacked targets protected by international law, including medical units, aid workers and water-pumping stations. He said that dropping indiscriminate incendiary weapons in heavily populated areas was particularly concerning, as well as being banned by a treaty that Russia is bound by. He compared Aleppo to the World War Two battles of Warsaw and Stalingrad and the attack on Dresden, and said calling the enemy a 'terrorist organization' was not an excuse to ignore the laws of war." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-zeid-idUSKCN1240RU
Religious figures also spoke out, including the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. "What is being done is evil both in the strict theological sense and in the general sense. It is demonic. It's the absolute contempt for the human spirit. For the dignity of the human being. It's the brushing aside of the poor and the weak and the fragile in a way that is as bad as anything we've seen in the last century. It compares with some of the great atrocities of the last century. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/violence-aleppo-demonic-archbishop-of-canterbury-syria-rome-justin-welby-a7349606.html
Dr. Ahmad Tarakji, President of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said, "It is important to face down the worst of humanity, look it straight in the eyes and refuse to blink. But we are closing our eyes to what is happening in Aleppo. If we are to not act now in the face of such depravity and disregard for basic norms - when will we ever?" https://www.savethechildren.net/article/un-general-assembly-must-urgently-unite-peace-syria-humanitarian-catastrophe-unfolds-aleppo
British MP Andrew Mitchell spoke out, on the floor of the House of Commons: "What Russia is doing to the United Nations is precisely what Italy and Germany did to the League of Nations in the 1930s. And they are doing to Aleppo precisely what the Nazis did to Guernica in the Spanish civil war." https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/oct/12/picasso-guernica-aleppo-syria
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put it simply: "The Assad regime is actually carrying out nothing short of a massacre." http://www.npr.org/2016/12/17/505893462/they-said-never-again
2.Clarifying the analogies:
Human beings use historical analogies to help us understand that world-historical events are taking place in the present moment; to help us comprehend the significance and meaning of these events in a deeper context; to help us assess more accurately their moral gravity; and to help us find the correct political and ethical response.
There are three sets of analogies here. It is important to differentiate them, and reflect on each.
The first set refers to aggression by Italy and Germany in the 1930s - including the 1935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Hitler's 1936 military occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the German and Italian intervention to support Franco against the republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and Hitler's occupation of the Czech Sudetenland in 1938 and the entire nation of Czechoslovakia the following year -- and the failure of the League of Nations to take action to prevent these illegal and grave violations of international peace and stability, or to punish Italy and Germany after those violations occurred. Blame for this failure can be assigned to the League's member states, especially Britain and France and its leaders, whose cowardice in the face of criminal aggression was clothed in the rhetoric of "non-intervention." But the greatest blame for this failure must be assigned to the United States. This is because the U.S. Senate, under the control of an "anti-globalist" Republican party, refused even to join the League, thus ensuring its fatal weakness.
The second set of historical analogies - Guernica, Warsaw, Stalingrad, Dresden - refers to the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian populations in urban areas, an atrocity and crime of war. Dresden is included in this list, as it should be. We must not forget that the United States and the U.K. perpetrated mass murder from the air during World War II no less than the Axis powers, culminating in the fire-bombing of Tokyo and the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations in Japanese cities. Each military force conducted indiscriminate bombing of enemy civilians, a category of war crime that was deliberately left out of the Nuremberg charter to ensure that no decision-maker, neither from Nazi Germany nor from any Allied power, would be held accountable.
Nevertheless, we remember.
We remember Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We remember that the U.S. dropped a far greater tonnage of explosives in Indochina from 1964 to 1973 than during all of World War II, including over 2 million tons of ordnance over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions -- the equivalent of one planeload every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years - and least 270 million cluster bomblets, killing 50,000 Laotians since 1964 (and 20,000 since 1973, after the war ended). http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/cluster-bomb-fact-sheet/
We remember the 1937 bombing Guernica because one individual, Pablo Picasso, indelibly portrayed the abject criminality of the German Luftwaffe and the Italian fascist Aviazione Legionaria in human terms. Poland can never forget the 1939 and 1944 bombing raids by the Luftwaffe on Warsaw, leveling the city and killing many thousands of its inhabitants. Hundreds of bombing sorties by the Luftwaffe over Stalingrad, combined with relentless attacks by Nazi troops in the city's streets, killed more than a million Russians there. Annihilation of civilian populations was not a collateral effect of Hitler's policy. Annihilation was Hitler's policy.
In January 2016, in a press conference in which he stood next to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Russian policy in Syria: "to fight them until their complete annihilation." https://www.rt.com/news/329591-syria-isis-lavrov-kerry/ Mr. Lavrov was referring specifically to ISIS and the Nusra Front. But the Russians were less nuanced and deceptive in subsequent months, as they prepared for the final onslaught on Aleppo's civilian neighborhoods. As described in an October 26 statement to the United Nations Security Council by Stephen O'Brien, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs:
"The leaflets which have been dropped on eastern Aleppo by Syrian and Russian aircrafts operating in that area make the intention chillingly clear. They read 'This is your last hope.... Save yourselves. If you do not leave these areas urgently, you will be annihilated' and they end by saying 'You know that everyone has given up on you. They left you alone to face your doom and nobody will give you any help'. And it is clear that the aircraft which drop the bombs, the generals who give the orders and the politicians who have designed the strategy intend to make good on that horrific promise."
As indeed they have done.
The third set of analogies includes Srebrenica and Rwanda. In these places mass murder was committed in cold blood. Executions were carried out by bullets to the head in the first case, and machetes in the second, while the international community watched and did nothing. According to the UN Human Rights Office, civilians in Aleppo were killed in summary executions as Syrian and Russian soldiers and mercenaries went house to house in the final phase of Assad's offensive against the besieged city. How many Russians took part in these executions? We don't know the answer. According to a Wall Street Journal news report published on December 16 ("Russian Special Forces Seen as Key to Aleppo Victory") reports: "On Sunday, the weekly state news program Vesti Nedeli offered a rare glimpse of Russians in combat, airing footage of Russian special operators in Syria. "Russian special forces have been in Aleppo for a number of weeks, where they've taken on a combat role," said Ruslan Pukhov, the head of Moscow-based defense think tank CAST." http://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-special-forces-seen-as-key-to-aleppo-victory-1481884200 In addition to the men, women and children killed by Russian bombs, how many civilians were slaughtered by Syrian and Russian militias? We don't know the answer to this question either.
A week ago, UN published evidence of at least 82 victims, but the killings have continued and perhaps escalated over in the subsequent days. http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21024&LangID=E#sthash.KMWaL70K.dpuf Whatever the number, these people were executed in cold blood.
Yesterday the UN envoy to Syria estimated that 50,000 men, women and children remain in eastern Aleppo. David Milliband, President of the International Rescue Committee, warned that these civilians face "sheer terror. And that is the only way to describe this because people are fleeing from appalling bombardment, and house-to-house murder that's being documented by the UN, and they don't know if it's going to follow them from Aleppo to Idlib [the Syrian city to which refugees from Aleppo are fleeing]."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aleppo-syria-civilians-massacre-assad-david-miliband-a7481241.html
In retrospect, UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura was correct in his assessment ten weeks ago: the annihilation of Aleppo was accomplished before Christmas. The UN Human Rights Commissioner's call for a referral to the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity has gone unheeded - because Russia has a veto power over any such referral. For the same reason the Security Council has been neutered. The Russians have been proven correct: civilians trapped in Aleppo were annihilated, as promised, and their assessment of the world's response was also vindicated. Everyone gave up on them, leaving them alone to face their doom, "and nobody will give you any help." Three days ago Syrian President Assad appeared on state television to celebrate the "liberation" of Aleppo. "Driving the last 'terrorists' out was 'history in the making', and 'greater than the word 'congratulations', he said." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aleppo-conflict-assad-ceasefire-syria-civil-war-a7477491.html
Will we remember the Aleppo as we remember Guernica? Thus far we don't have a 21st century Picasso to capture the victims' agony in a way that captures the world's moral imagination with comparable force. The brushing aside of the poor and the weak and the fragile continues unabated, in Syria and throughout the world. Millions of Syrian refugees and internally displaced men, women and children have been abandoned.
The U.S. President-elect has promised to prevent any of them from finding refuge in our country, no matter what our obligations under international law. In a recent interview on Russian media, in the wake of Aleppo's destruction, Syrian President Bashir Assad said that Donald Trump will be a "naturally ally" of his regime, and Putin's - presuming that he acts according to pronouncements he made during the campaign.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-bashar-al-assad-donald-trump-russias-natural-ally-putin-a7474786.html
According to analysis in the November 15, 2016 Washington Post: "Assad's government is exulting over Trump's election because of his pledges to join forces with Russia against the Islamic State and Syrian rebels, according to Bassam Abu Abdullah, a professor at Damascus University who supports Assad. The expectation in Damascus now is that Washington will sever support for Syrian rebels, join in bombing them alongside Russia and perhaps restore diplomatic relations with Assad, he said."
We pray that President Assad and Professor Bassam Abu Abdullah are incorrect in their predictions.
3.The silence of the good people: the "wintertime soldiers of conscience".
Of course we will never forget the famous "I Have a Dream" speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But it is the speech delivered just before King's speech that haunts us most powerfully to this day. It was given by Rabbi Joachim Prinz, and this is the paragraph we remember most:
"When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence. A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder. America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent." http://www.joachimprinz.com/civilrights.htm
Rabbi Prinz was speaking directly about the persistence of Jim Crow segregation throughout the former Confederate states. But his warning has a far deeper resonance.
His call to conscience demands that we remember Dresden as we remember Guernica. We must remember Srebrenica, and we must also remember instances when U.S. forces perpetrated mass murder against foreign civilians. On April 23, 1971, three years after Rabbi Prinz's plea at the March on Washington, a young Vietnam veteran could no longer remain silent about what he had witnessed and experienced during his service overseas. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he spoke out in protest against the moral atrocities perpetrated against civilians in that war, and against silence of good Americans in the face of war crimes committed in their name. The name of the veteran was John Kerry. Here is an excerpt from his testimony on that day:
"I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."
"They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
"We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough."
"We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out...." http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/VVAW_Kerry_Senate.htm
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The most terrible such crime was the massacre by U.S. troops of Vietnamese women and children in the hamlet of My Lai, South Vietnam. Calley was prosecuted, convicted and released before his sentence had been completed. But his superior officers were never held accountable for creating the environment in which Calley's actions were understood to be permissible.
4.Facing down evil
We were reminded of the My Lai massacre yesterday when we read the New York Times obituary of Larry Colburn, a Vietnam-era veteran and American hero who died earlier this past week. According to the Times, "Colburn, was the last surviving member of a three-man helicopter crew that was ordered to hover over My Lai on Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, to identify enemy positions by drawing Vietcong fire." But there was no enemy fire, because there were no Vietcong soldiers in the hamlet. Only women and children, shot in cold blood or being herded into an irrigation ditch to be executed there. Colburn and his colleagues watched from above as their fellow platoon members systematically murdered the villagers.
In a 2010 PBS interview, Colburn described what happened next. Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot, notified his superiors. "[Thompson] got on the radio and just said, 'This isn't right, these are civilians, there's people killing civilians down here." But Thompson's superior officers didn't care. "And that's when he decided to intervene. He said, 'We've got to do something about this, are you with me?' And we said, 'Yes.'"
The Times obituary continues:
"Mr. Thompson confronted the officer in command of the rampaging platoon, Lt. William L. Calley, but was rebuffed. He then positioned the helicopter between the troops and the surviving villagers and faced off against another lieutenant. Mr. Thompson ordered Mr. Colburn to fire his M-60 machine gun at any soldiers who tried to inflict further harm.
"'Y'all cover me!" Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying. "If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!'"
"'You got it boss,' Mr. Colburn replied. 'Consider it done.'"
"Mr. Thompson, Mr. Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, the copter's crew chief, found about 10 villagers cowering in a makeshift bomb shelter and coaxed them out, then had them flown to safety by two Huey gunships. They found an 8-year old boy clinging to his mother's corpse in an irrigation ditch and plucked him by the back of his shirt and delivered him to a nun in a nearby hospital.
"Crucially, they reported what they had witnessed to headquarters, which ordered a cease-fire. By then, as many as 500 villagers had been killed...
"In 1998, thirty years after the massacre, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Colburn were awarded the Soldier's Medal, which is granted for life-saving bravery not involving direct contact with an enemy.
"'It is my solemn wish that we all never forget the tragedy and brutality of war,' Mr. Colburn said at the ceremony, held at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. 'I would like to quote Gen. Douglas MacArthur: 'The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and the unarmed. It is his very existence for being.'
"... The two men returned to My Lai that year, meeting some of the villagers they had rescued and dedicating an elementary school. On the flight home, Mr. Colburn recalled, he turned to Mr. Thompson and said, 'It was so good to see all those little kids smiling again, not having to worry about being blown up, not having to look over their shoulders all the time, just being able to be kids.'
"Mr. Thompson died of cancer in 2006 at 62.
Two years later, on the 40th anniversary of the massacre, Mr. Colburn returned to Vietnam and was reunited with Do Ba, who as a boy had been rescued by Mr. Colburn from an irrigation ditch."
Lest we forget: Morality and Conscience reminds us that "WE are the ones we've
been waiting for"!