[NYTr] Civil Resistance & Prevention of State Crimes

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by the author - August 20, 2004

   "[I]f we Americans do not act now we could lose our Republic."


Civil Resistance and the Prevention of State Crimes

by Francis A. Boyle

Beginning with the Reagan/Bush administrations' ascent to power in January
of 1981, the United has demonstrated little if any respect for international
law, international organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation
of the requirements for maintaining international peace and security.
Instead there has been a comprehensive assault upon the integrity of the
international legal order.  The Reagan administration's foreign policy
represented a deviation from basic rules of international deportment and
civilized behavior that the United States government had pioneered in
promoting for the world community.  In many instances elements of the Reagan
foreign policy constituted criminal activity under well-recognized
principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, specifically the
Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles.

Among the responses to the Reagan administration's attack upon the
international and domestic legal orders, was an upsurge in civil resistance
activities protesting against U.S. international policies that grossly
violated international law and human rights.  These citizen protests led to
numerous arrests and prosecutions by federal, state, and local governmental
authorities all over the country.  Soon thereafter, this author began to
give advice, counsel and assistance to individuals and groups who had
engaged in acts of civil resistance directed against several aspects of the
U.S. government's foreign policy: the Nuclear Freeze Movement, the Sanctuary
Movement, Greenpeace International, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the
Plowshares Movement, the Pledge of Resistance Campaign, and Gulf War
resisters, among others.  I also participated in the defense of individuals
who engaged in civil resistance protesting against the U.S. government's
policies on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, Central America and the
Caribbean, Southern Africa, Europe, the Middle East, etc. who were
independent of formal movements.

In addition, I have also helped defend active duty members of United States
armed forces who were persecuted and prosecuted because of their acts of
conscience and principle.  For example, in the fall of 1990, I served as
Counsel for the successful defense of U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jeff
Paterson, the first military resister to Bush Sr.'s Gulf War. Then I
represented U.S.M.C. Lance Corporal David Mihaila in a successful effort to
obtain his discharge from the Marine Corps as a Conscientious Objector
during Gulf War I.  Corporal Mihaila was the Clerk of the Court for the
Paterson court-martial proceedings and according to him was motivated to
apply for CO status as a result of my oral argument for Corporal Paterson.

In 1991 I served as Counsel for the defense of Captain Dr. Yolanda
Huet-Vaughn, who was court-martialed by the U.S. Army in part because of her
refusal to administer experimental vaccines to soldiers destined to fight in
Gulf War I.  Later, I served as Counsel for the defense of U.S. Army Captain
Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed for his heroic efforts to stop
torture in Haiti after the Clinton administration had illegally invaded that
country in 1994.  Most recently, in 2004 I served as Counsel for the defense
of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first military resister to the
current Iraq War.

Upon their incarcerations, both Capt. Dr. Huet-Vaughn and Staff Sgt. Mejia
were quickly designated as Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty International. 
Many Americans are unaware of the existence of American Prisoners of
Conscience or Political Prisoners in our own prisons in the United State. 
In fact, there are many.  Both Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn and Staff
Sgt. Camilo Mejia are America's equivalent to Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov,
Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others who became powerful symbols of
the resistance to injustice.  They are the archetypal American Heroes whom
we should be bringing into our schools and teaching our children to emulate,
not the wholesale purveyors of violence and bloodshed adulated by the U.S. 
government and the media.

One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the
"good" Germans?  Well, there were some good Germans.  The Lutheran
theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only the most prominent
exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the
Nazi-terror state even unto death.

Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the
"good" Americans who are prepared to stand up for principle in the face of
state terror carried out on a world scale?  Well, there are some good
Americans.  Some of them face arrest and jail for protesting against United
States targeting of civilians with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) whose
power for human extermination far exceeds even the wildest fantasies of
Hitler and the Nazis.  Others for protesting against illegal U.S. military
interventions around the world since September 11, 2001.  As my friend and
colleague former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark once said: "Our jails
are filling up with saints!" This book both subjects U.S. foreign policy to
scrutiny from the perspective of international law and human rights, as well
as telling their stories of protest against inhumanity and injustice.

This book comes at a critical time in the history of the United States of
America as a constitutional Republic with a commitment to the rule of law
and human rights, both at home and abroad.  In international legal terms,
the Bush Jr. administration should be viewed as constituting an ongoing
criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the
Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles
because of its formulation and undertaking of wars of aggression, crimes
against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated
by the former Nazi regime in Germany.  As a consequence, American citizens
possesses the basic right under international law and United States domestic
law, including the American Constitution, to engage in acts of civil
resistance in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing
criminal activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their
conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to
relate to defense and counter-terrorism.

This same right of civil resistance extends pari passu to all citizens of
the world community of states.  Everyone around the world has both the right
and the duty under international law to resist ongoing criminal activities
perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its foreign accomplices in
allied governments.  If not so restrained, the Bush Jr. administration could
very well precipitate a Third World War.

The time for preventive action is now.  Civil resistance is the way to go. 
People power can overcome power politics.  Popular movements have succeeded
in toppling tyrannical, dictatorial and authoritarian regimes throughout
former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, and most
recently in Latin America.  It is time once again to exercise People Power
in the United States of America.

Despite the best efforts by the Bush Jr. Leaguers to the contrary, we
American Citizens still have our First Amendment Rights: Freedom of Speech,
Freedom of Association, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Petition our
Government for the Redress of these massive Grievances, Civil Resistance,
etc.  We are going to have to start vigorously exercising all of our First
Amendment Rights right now.  We must use them or else, as the saying goes,
we will lose them.  We must act not only for the good of the Peoples of
Southwest Asia, but for our future, that of our children, that of our nation
as a democratic society committed to the rule of law and the U.S.
Constitution.  This book will give the reader the intellectual tools
necessary to battle the international and domestic legal nihilism of the
Bush Jr. administration; the Ashcroft Police State; America's Nuclear and
Hydrocarbon Empires; and the U.S.  Power Elite before they run completely
amok all over the world as well as here at home.  The Nazis had their
"homeland" too.

The Athenians lost their democracy.  The Romans lost their Republic.  And if
we Americans do not act now we could lose our Republic.  The United States
of America is not immune to the laws of history!