Word: falke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Perhaps the most influential discussion of the war crimes issue was undertaken by legal scholars who specialized in international law and the law of war. Richard A. Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law and the law of war. Richard A. Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, began to argue that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was illegal soon after American troops entered combat in Indochina in large numbers. As the war dragged on through the sixties. Falk became increasingly active in the antiwar movement, and came to argue that the standards of justice applied...
Telford Taylor, a professor of International Law at Columbia and a one-time chief prosecutor at Nurenberg, came to share Falk's conclusion that the U.S. was committing crimes of war in Vietnam, though he had started from an entirely different perspective. Taylor had begun as a proponent of the U.S. war effort against North Vietnam, which page 4/Dump Truck in part accounts for the impact of his book Nurenberg and Vietnam. Published in 1971, this book used a conservative and restricted interpretation of international law, and in it Taylor came to the painful conclusion that his government...
...part, Falk said last week that the need for a war crimes proceeding "is present, perhaps greater than when the war was going on, since the American involvement in the war is so easily repressed." He says that "if one takes the principle of individual responsibility seriously, then there should be some sort of war crimes trial"--but, with the same ambivalence he felt in 1969, he quickly adds, "It's quixotic to suggest that trials actually take place in this climate...
Noting that "people in this country who committed war crimes continue to enjoy respect," Falk says that the mainstream of "the American people are unprepared for allegations of criminality. "War crimes trials would be disruptive," he says, "since so many people are trying so hard to forget." He admits, though, "Maybe I've too easily estimated the mood of the nation on the war issue...
Ralph Schoenman, who served as secretary-general of the Russell War Crimes Tribunal and who now lives in Princeton, N.J., says that Falk's view of popular sentiment on the war issue is "reactionary." "Nobody but the ruling class is willing to forget Indochina." Schoenman said last week. The Russell Tribunal, he says, was "an attempt to show that American imperialism needed experimental weapons to survive the war in Vietnam," adding that the best evidence of popular support for the Russell proceedings was the large number of military personnel who showed up to testify before the tribunal...