A New Nuremberg Moment

III. Although at this point in time Mr. Obama does not seem likely to receive any approbation from the United Nations to launch an act of aggression against Syria, explicit approval from the UN would be of no consequence in any event. The adhesion of the United States to the UN is merely the product of a treaty. And no treaty can add to, subtract from, or qualify the powers of either the General Government or the States, let alone the limitations on those powers, nor deprive WE THE PEOPLE of any of their rights, set out in the Constitution.[28] The UN can no more authorize the General Government to engage in aggression than it can authorize Congress to crown a King—or install a Führer—and infuse him with the unilateral power to wage war.[29] And, of course, no treaty can override the Declaration of Independence, let alone the principles of government set out therein, which derive not from any merely human law but instead from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”, which are absolutely superior to all human laws. Indeed, if the UN put forward a resolution in the Security Council purporting to authorize—or, worse yet, to command—the United States to attack Syria, it would be the duty of the United States to veto that resolution (and, one would hope, to consider immediately terminating this country’s participation in that body).

IV. The truly shocking aspect of the present situation lies in the parallels that can be drawn between it and the context of the Nuremberg Trials. The record of those proceedings is contained in a set of volumes entitled, appropriately, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression.[30] The theory of the prosecution—which, of course, resulted in convictions of the leading Nazis hauled before the tribunal—was that, although the Nazi Party was in many respects a political institution legitimate under German law, it was also (and perhaps primarily) a conspiratorial, even criminal, enterprise—because its ultimate aim was to seize power in Germany, pervert that power to its own purposes, and under color of that perverted power to wage a series of aggressive wars against other nations in order to advance the Nazis’ illegitimate political and economic interests. On several key points, the present situation in the United States is arguably worse than the situation in Germany which led to Nuremberg.

(1) As monstrous as he proved to be, originally Adolf Hitler was legitimately elevated to the status of Chancellor of Germany, and thereafter was legitimately granted the powers which he later abused to the terror of the world. Although he has adopted and is carrying out at least one policy as criminal and despicable as Hitler’s—that is, “official assassinations” (discussed in my previous NewsWithViews commentaries entitled “Death Squads” and “Where Is the Outrage?”)—as a general matter Mr. Obama may actually enjoy less legitimacy than did Hitler. For he (Obama) may in fact and law not be “eligible to the Office of President” at all, because he is not “a natural born Citizen”;[31] whereas, in contrast, Hitler, although a native Austrian, was eligible for the office of Chancellor of Germany.

Of course, not being privy to all of the important details, I take no hard and fast position on Mr. Obama’s eligibility vel non. But the undeniable fact remains that, although the issue of his ineligibility is not only notorious but also of critical political and legal importance for myriad reasons, he and his apologists have refused to present for public scrutiny the key documentation —in its original, unexpurgated, and undoctored form—which could settle the matter once and for all. As this evidence is under their control, and its contents presumably known to them, the only reasonable conclusion which one can draw from their reluctance to make full disclosure is that such disclosure would not support the claim that Mr. Obama is actually “eligible to the Office of President”. Thus, America is confronted with the fantastic assertion that an individual arguably not “eligible to the Office of President” at all may nevertheless exercise powers beyond those which that “Office” extends to an individual actually “eligible” for it. This is usurpation to the second power, of which even Hitler was not guilty.

(2) To excuse his invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler claimed to have launched a necessary “preventive war” or “preëmptive strike”. And a not insignificant body of evidence tends to support the thesis that Stalin was,indeed, deploying his own massive forces near the frontier in preparation for a sneak attack on Germany sometime in late 1941 or early 1942, and that Hitler simply beat him to the punch.[32] Nonetheless, Hitler’s rationale has never been treated as a justification for his actions. Ironically, not even Mr. Obama himself has worked up the nerve to claim that Syria is preparing to attack the United States with nerve gas (or in any other fashion). Apparently, the Syrian régime has been nervy enough to try to resist the puppet forces Mr. Obama has unleashed against Syria, and which his mouthpieces describe as “freedom fighters” when they are obviously little more than hired “terrorists”. But an act of self-defense by Syria within her own borders can hardly qualify as an act of aggression against the United States, unless any resistance by any country to armed neo-imperialism emanating from the Disgrace of Columbia is an act of “aggression” on the victim’s part.

(3) Hitler explained his attack on Stalin’s Russia as aimed at overthrowing the center of world Bolshevism. Even if one discounts that theory notwithstanding Hitler’s evident sincerity in making it, no one can deny that Stalin was one of the worst, if not absolutely the worst of all, tyrants of the Twentieth Century (or perhaps of any other century); and that, if any tyrant ever deserved to be overthrown by force of arms, he did. (Moreover, Stalin was hardly an innocent bystander in the events leading up to World War II. Had it not been for the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, through which Hitler and Stalin agreed to attack and dismember Poland, the war might not have broken out in 1939, or perhaps at all.) Yet, after Hitler was defeated, the world refused to accept the Nazis’ plea that his crusade against Stalinist Bolshevism justified the German attack on Russia.

If the present “Obama doctrine”—which in all fairness cannot be attributed to him alone, as it finds its antecedents in the same line of aberrant special pleading put forward by both the real Presidents Clinton and Bush—were generalized so as to apply to all nations, most nations could attack the United States just as “rightfully” as the United States could attack Syria. Indeed, they would be even more justified in doing so, because of the peculiar status of Mr. Obama himself. If Mr. Obama is actually not “eligible to the Office of President”, he is an usurper on that score alone. No country should be forced to tolerate an usurper in its highest national office. Certainly that crime is as serious as any which Mr. Obama attributes to the régime in Syria. In addition, as the faux “President” and “Commander in Chief”, Mr. Obama is usurping the utterly nonexistent power of a real President to deploy the Armed Forces of the United States for the purposes of aggression whenever he “draws a line in the sand”. This threatens, not only all Americans, and not only the Syrians, but all peoples everywhere who somehow might arouse Mr. Obama’s ire. He has already done incalculable damage in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and so on (just as Clinton did in the Balkans and Bush in Iraq). He baits and bristles at Iran openly. He threatens Russia and China, albeit more subtly. So those countries—and for that matter the rest of the world, confronted as it is by the rabid “dogs of war” howling in the Disgrace of Columbia—have even more “right” to intervene here than Mr. Obama has to intervene anywhere. Indeed, they could justifiably demand, not necessarily “régime change”, but instead simply “régime clarification”: namely, Who is “Barack Obama”? What rightful claim does he have to be eligible for “the Office of President” as a “natural born Citizen”? What rightful claim does he or anyone else have to deploy the Armed Forces of the United States against other nations which pose no imminent threat to America? And who in official positions in the General Government is covering up his masquerade, and for what reasons? One must wonder why Vladimir Putin— who, with masterly understatement, recently described as “utter nonsense” Mr. Obama’s claims concerning the Syrian régime’s alleged use of poison gas —has not raised these obvious and telling objections to the Obama régime and the American “war party” as a whole.

V. In order to solve these problems, Americans should not have to depend upon intervention by foreigners or the invocation of so-called “international law”. This country’s present body of domestic law—both constitutional and statutory—is quite adequate for that purpose. For instance, assume arguendo that Mr. Obama and his shadowy “advisors”, henchmen, and hangers-on decide to attack Syria. To that end, Mr. Obama orders to the Eastern Mediterranean American military and naval personnel stationed within some part of the United States. He then orders these personnel to conduct military strikes against Syria. As with most orders of this type, these are enforced by the at least implicit threat of court-martial (and probably the explicit threat, too, as more and more service personnel are starting seriously to question under what authority they can be dragooned into such foreign military adventures). In the course of these attacks, some (yea, far too many) American servicemen suffer bodily injury or are killed.

What has come before in this commentary should convince any Grand Juror that, as hypothesized, this entire operation reeks of the most fetid aggression imaginable. No American can be ordered under color of law—whether civilian or military—to commit aggression. Therefore, these orders, enforced by the threat of court-martial, violated the affected service personnel’s constitutional and statutory rights, all of which are “civil rights” in the full legal sense. The first and primarily causative link in the chain of illegal activities was forged in the United States when the affected personnel received their illegal orders to deploy. So this case comes squarely within the statutes which provide that:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the

Constitution or laws of the United States * * * —

They shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * , they shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.[33]

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or shall be sentenced to death.[34]

Observe that the phrase “under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom” in the second of these statutes would cover both: (i) usurpers with a claim to the office but no claim to the particular power they purported to exercise; and (ii) usurpers not only with no claim to the particular power they purported to exercise but also with no claim to the office they purported to occupy under falsified credentials. In the latter case their misbehavior would be doubly wrongful (although they could be penalized only once for each offense). Moreover, observe that not one of these defendants—whether an usurper in an unitary sense or in a dual sense—would need to be “impeached” before he could be indicted and tried.

The readers of this commentary can easily draw up their own lists of likely defendants, starting at the White House, and then proceeding to the Capitol, to the Pentagon, to the big “mainstream media”—and finally to the powerful lobbying groups, both domestic and foreign, which hatched these criminal policies and then put them into effect through the wiles of political ventriloquism. Of course, these malefactors would be suffered to proffer a defense. That is the American way of “due process of law”. Maybe they could successfully assert the insanity defense: namely, that, “as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, [they] w[ere] unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of [their] acts”.[35] Then again, maybe not. But they should be given the opportunity to try. America and the world deserve as much.

VI. If the “civil-rights laws” quoted above had existed in Germany in the late 1930s, and the German people could have enforced them, how long would Hitler and his crowd have lasted? Der Führer’s tenure in office might have been counted in mere months, not years; and the damage he could have inflicted upon Germany and throughout Europe would have been largely forefended. Unfortunately for them, Germans in that day were not armed with such laws (or with a constitution which properly limited the powers of their central government).

Today, in the United States, these laws exist (and have existed for more than a century). Yet “the war party” has succeeded in dragging this country into one foreign military adventure after another, none of them covered with even a fig-leaf of constitutional respectability. New Nuremberg Trials are not being held. Indictments are not being had. No one is even calling for them. (Well, almost no one.) Although Americans have the inestimable advantage of actually possessing the Constitution and laws of a free country, they are no more living in such a country than did the Germans under the Nazis—and next to no one, including most self-styled “constitutionalists” and “patriots”, seems to want to do anything about it other than to bemoan the state of affairs which has beset this country.

Now why is that? It is because WE THE PEOPLE do not control this country as a matter of fact, although they certainly still do as a matter of law. WE THE PEOPLE do not control this country in fact, because they do not dispose of the institutions the Constitution itself tells them are “necessary to the security of a free State”. I shall refrain from identifying these institutions by reference to “the M word”, lest some readers who have been thoroughly conditioned by a certain “poverty” law center should lose control of their bodily functions and be forced to run out to purchase a jumbo-sized box of industrial-strength adult underwear upon which they can depend for protection. Yet, although I should be the last person to denigrate the fundamental individual right of the sheeple to keep and wear diapers (political or otherwise), which seems to be gaining favor amongst timid “constitutionalists” and “patriots” at an ever-accelerating rate, I must assert my doubts that denying the Constitution will ever prove to be an effective way to defend it.

No one who views the present situation through clear eyes can come to any conclusion other than this country is confronted by a new “Nuremberg moment”. The last time, Americans were among the prosecutors. This time, unless they cast aside their fear, indifference, and sloth, the American people themselves will be the ones History indicts. For part one click below.

1. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Robert Bell, American Edition, 4 Volumes & Appendix, 1771- 1773), Volume 1, at 257, 262.
2. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1.
3. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 11.
4. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 26 (1942) (emphasis supplied).
5. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 12.
6. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 13.
7. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 14.
8. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 15.
9. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 16.
10. U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1.
11. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 14 and 18.
12. U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1.
13. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 16 and 18.
14. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 15 and 18.
15. Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. (1 Wheaton) 304, 326 (1816). Accord, McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 405 (1819).
16. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 25 (1942).
17. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 68 (1936).
18. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 7.
19. U.S. Const. art. II, § 3.
20. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174 (1803).
21. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 12, 13, 15, 16, 14, 16, and 18.
22. Compare and contrast U.S. Const. art. I, §§ 1 and 8 with art. II, § 1, cl. 1.
23. Marshall Field & Company v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 692 (1892). See, e.g., Panama Refining Company v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935).
24. See generally, e.g., Neo-CONNED! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of the War in Iraq. Asserting the traditional, Christian just war doctrine against the neoconservative caricature that masks violence and aggression, D.L. O’Huallachain & J. Forrest Sharpe, Editors (Vienna, Virginia: IHS Press, 2005), Chapters 11 and 14.
25. See, e.g., Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 1, 187-189 (1824); Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 37 U.S. (12 Peters) 657, 730-731 (1838).
26. Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. (9 Howard) 603, 614 (1850).
27. Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 653 (1948).
28. E.g., Doe v. Braden, 57 U.S. (16 Howard) 635, 657 (1853); The Cherokee Tobacco, 78 U.S. (11 Wallace) 616, 620-621 (1871); Holden v. Joy, 84 U.S. (17 Wallace) 211, 243 (1872); Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 701 (1898); Asakura v. City of Seattle, 265 U.S. 332, 341 (1924); United States v. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181, 208 (1926); Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 16-18 (1957) (opinion of Black, J., announcing the judgment).
29. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8.
30. These are available on the Internet.
31. See U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 4.
32. See, e.g., Joachim Hoffman, Stalin’s War of Extermination, 1941-1945 (Capshaw, Alabama: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001).
33. 18 U.S.C. § 241.
34. 18 U.S.C. § 242.
35. 18 U.S.C. § 17.

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