Talk:Radhabinod Pal
There is one idiot in every crowd. We save this guys country from having to learn Japanese and this is the thanks we get. This is why I am against the International Criminal Court. Too many third worlders with strange concepts of law and order.
It seems to me that many lawyers involved with the post-WWII Far Eastern war crimes trials found them to be more about revenge than justice. I suggest looking at the circumstances surrounding General Yamashita's conviction and execution on highly spurious charges that would never have stood in a fair court. Such "justice" throws mud on the reputation of the West. And sign your comments. Kensai Max 00:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree - the so called Tokyo Trail was more or less victor's justice. Saving a country from invasion by an agressor is undoubtly a noble act, but the motivation for America to join WWII was pretty much a result of self-interest thinking (yeah right, I forgot, America was "forced" to join the war 'cause it was "ambushed" "without any reason" by the "evil Japs" - and hey look, there's Santa Clause riding Rudy the Reindeer...^^). As a matter of fact, the Japanese committed quite a lot of crimes against humanity during WWII (not only the Nanking Massacre or experiments involving biological warfare in Korea and China), as did the Germans or the Italians. BUT believe it or not, also the American Forces, the Russian Red Army in Europe or the British committed war crimes (raping women and children, annihilating whole cities without any (!) military reason or importance just as an act of retaliation - Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Cologne,... -, building concentration camps for Japanese residents in the US - where they were forced to vegetate under worst circumstances and quite many of them died due to the inhuman treatment by the american officials - an so on...). Sure, this doesn't fit the Hollywood-image of the "good" american GI or british rifleman risking his life to battle the "evil" Axis-powers - but unfortunately, the world isn't only black and white and as I stated above those crimes did happen and there were many of them (of course, they don't cover hardly any negative aspect of the angelic allied armies in Hollywood-movies, nor do they teach them in history class in the US or in the UK).
So I think, it is of course necessary to put people, who committed crimes against humanity during any war, on trial, BUT this includes also people on the winning side. You cannot claim them to stand above the law or even above humanity (also see -> Abu Ghraib). The bombing of Nagasaki just 3 days after the - arguably war-shortening - bombing of Hiroshima was in NO way justifiable. People who know of the laggardness of the chain of command in the military as well as in politics and bureaucracy (and I am pretty sure, the American Authorities knew) also know that it was simply not possible for the Japanese leaders to gain information on what happened in Hiroshima, proccessing it, discussing the result and handing in the unconditional surrender within only 3 days, especially if you consider that the whole infrastructure e.g. telephones and the like were completely destroyed, so that it took Tokyo more than 24 hours only to realize what happend there! But, hey we still got this plutonium-core type nuclear weapon, so what the heck... let's test it too. Hundreds of thousands of civilians dying...? Ahh, c'mmon - they're only Japs, so what...?! - right? And those evil Nazi-civilians in remote Dresden... What? Not only Nazis living there? Also democrats, socialists and people from the resistance; evil Nazi-women, evil Nazi-children and evil Nazi-babies; people who actually hated the regime and hoping for a quick end of the war...? So what! They bombed London and Coventry so let's pay it back! Yeehaw Well, is that how the morally superior victors of WWII were thinking during the war? Doesn't sound very morally superior to me...
Another example? Here you go: Due to the specific (!) policy of Gen. Eisenhower, about one milion german soldiers died during their imprisonment in allied POW-camps! One million POWs! Additional to approximately 5,7 million civilians who were not provided with enough food to survive even though the food actually was there. But it was held back on orders by the american military officiels. Ahhh rrrhight must have been all Nazis of course, so what?! American military governor Lucius Dubignon Clay (who later helped the Germans a lot because then, they were needed during the cold war against the Sovjets) on that: "Let the Germans suffer!" Knew that? Probably not. Other examples can be found easily, well, if you are not afraid of the inconvenient truth, that is...
So, of course, hang the soldiers, general officers, politicians and bureaucrats who committed war crimes and crimes against humanitiy, but deal with them in this way on BOTH sides. Hang Tojo Hideki, hang Kimura Heitaro, hang Hermann Goering and hang Ernst Kaltenbrunner. But then - also do so with the war criminals on the allied/sovjet side (Truman, Eisenhower, Patton, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Georgy Zhukov,...). According to my understanding of the term "justice", anyone who committes crimes has to be put to trial, not only people from the other side, am I wrong? I don't think so, maybe only a little naive ;-)
But, as we all know, they did not bring them to trial - they never do. War trials are always based on victor's justice, no matter what country won the war. That's just the way it works - just don't assume that the allies during WWII have all been gleaming knights in shiny armour fighting "the evil" in a holy war...
And maybe that's just what Mr. Pal was thinking (by the way: Mr. Pal - an idiot?! He was not just an eminently respectable jurist and scholar but also the ONLY (!) judge in the whole trial who had some experience in international law; all the others allied jurists were ingenuous on that field of law and were vastly influenced by the american administration and the US Army - mainly Gen. MacArthur, who basically decided by himself who was to be sentenced to death and who was still needed by the US after the war and was therefore to be spared. So I ask you, who were the idiots? Ah, I forgot, anyone who dares to criticize impeccable America must, by some myterious law of nature, be an idiot, right?! Especially when he's from a third world country with all their "strange concepts of law and order"... What a profound attitude, Sir^^) Btw, I am neither Japanese, German or Indian nor an Arabian - and I am also not a third worlder, sorry ;-) --134.96.76.227 18:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)