Is President George W. Bush, a war criminal?

With the recent appointment as National Security Adviser by President Donald Trump, of John Bolton, who played a key role in launching the war in Iraq by the US, threats to escalation of policies are presented, which international law would see as punishable crimes.

Last month, the New York Times marked the 15th anniversary of the Iraq war with a touching article by Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi novelist living in the US, titled “Fifteen years ago, America destroyed the site of Tim”. Antoine rejected as Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship the US-led invasion in 2003, which brought the country into chaos, caused ethnic tensions and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. destabilising the region, the war enabled the empowering of the Islamic State, which then occupied a considerable part of Iraqi territory, killing opponents, through attempted genocide against the Yazid minority and spreading terrorism around the world.

The struggle to overthrow Saddam was obviously a tragic crime. Antoine says it was also a crime. If that's correct, the authors are still at large. Few Americans would take President George seriously. W. Bush and other members of his administration, including Vice President Dick Chen, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton, recently appointed by President Donald Trump as National Security Adviser, are war criminals. As many Britons wouldn't think of Prime Minister Tony Blair in this regard. However, the issue supporting these accusations of committing a crime is surprisingly strong.

The idea that it is a crime to launch a war by aggression dates back at least to 1919, when the Versailles Treaty prompted Kaizer Wilhelm II to stand trial for “a supreme violation against international morality”. Such a trial did not take place after World War I, but after the second war, the launch and promotion of aggression wars was one of four causes over which, during the Nuremberg trials, International Military Tribunal sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death, among them Hermann Göring, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbethrop and Marshal Wilhelm Keel.

After trials, the United States International Law Commission codified basic legal principles in a document known as the Nuremberg Principles. The principles say that anyone who committed a crime under international law is responsible for it and must be punished, despite the legitimacy of their conduct under local law where they acted. The document cites several crimes under international law, including “planning, preparing, launching or promoting war in violation of international treaties, agreements or guarantees” and “participation in a joint plan or conspiracy” to launch or promote such a war.

The U.S. and United Kingdom played major roles in the Nuremberg Courts. If they fail to apply the same standards to their leaders, is that not hypocrisy?

The invasion of Iraq was an act of aggression against a country that was not attacking or threatening to attack another country. It was also a violation of the UN Charter, which includes the statement: “All members should not use threats in their international relations or use force towards the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other way that does not comply with the UN goals. Bush and Blair requested Security Council authorisation of the attack, claiming Iraq was in violation of its agreement for disarmament. But France, China and other Security Council members refused, arguing that weapons inspectors in Iraq should then be allowed to continue their work to find out whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However, Bush and Blair advanced the attack.

Bolton, then Deputy Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was part of the “joint plan” to wage a war of aggression. He found out with intelligence analysts who disagreed with what the Bush administration wanted them to support. John Prados, near George Washington University's National Security Archives, has commented: “Analists working in Iraqi intelligence cannot be blamed for telling them that their careers would be in danger if they gave different answers from what Bush administration wanted to hear”. The Bush administration requested false and deformative evidence of truth, mainly through counterfeiting documents in order to show Iraq as if it were seeking to buy uranium from Nigeria to justify the predetermined decision to invade oil-rich Iraq.

Blair justified the invasion as necessary to prevent Saddam's crimes against humanity. In a book of memories of Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister and chief author of the doctrine “responsibility to protect” which is now the basis of international thought on the issue when a humanitarian intervention is justified has rejected that claim. He acknowledged Saddam committed crimes in the 1980s and early 1990s that would have justified intervention, but in 2000 his behavior “was no more scandalous than that of other leaders who violated human rights in the world”.

It is unlikely that Bush or any other member of his administration will be tried for crimes inciting an aggressive fight. The common place for such a trial is the International Criminal Court. Although President Bill Clinton signed the treaty to establish this Court, the Bush administration withdrew the signing and the US is not yet part of the treaty.

This does not mean, however, that it does not make sense to discuss the considered criminal nature of the Iraqi attack. International tensions have increased since Trump took over. Bolton's assignment would escalate them further, taking into account his harsh views of Iran and North Korea. This is a time when we should remind ourselves that promoting a war is often a crime and always remains a crime, even if crime goes unpunished.

Project Syndicate