A new War Crimes Tribunal posted by Richard Seymour

As we're in the middle of a new wave of US imperial expansion, and given that this is causing enormous amounts of death and suffering, perhaps it's time to consider an updated Bertrand Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal . Whatever one's views on 'international law', the proceedings would probably have to orient themselves around an interpretation of UN resolutions, of precedents and so on. But there would also be a certain amount of fact gathering, data-collection, and a rigorous assessment of the information presented so far. The statements of war leaders would have to be examined and set against their record. The complicity of apparently non-combatant countries would have to be looked at.

Western intellectuals are generally shifting to the left, certainly on these questions. But so far there has been little tendency to aggregate their skills, efforts and moral outrage. Bloggery has gone some way to accounting for what has happened, but it's a very isolated medium - there isn't a great deal of collaborative effort. Still, I do suggest that if the intellectuals can't get their act together, we bloggers ought to. We should work together by e-mail and in other ways too, to come up with a set of aims, and points of discussion. From there we should conduct what limited research we can and communicate information as we find it. Week by week, we should present our findings. Seriously. Get in touch. Actually, why not treat it like the Nuremberg trials? Not because Bush is a fascist, but because a) it will piss some of the right people off, and b) we could recommend hanging at the end of it.

Update: Turns out there is a World Tribunal on Iraq . Well worth a look.