geo (02/15/83)
Jim @ arizona asks why Idi Amin, August Pinochet and the people who were responsible for the the massacre of Armenians were not tried, if the french government plans to extradite Klaus Barbey, "the Butcher of Lyon". I would like to direct people's attention to a short science fiction story entitled 'My Trial as a War Criminal', by Leo Szilard. Szilard was an nuclear physicist. He was the person who coined the term 'chain reaction' , in 1933, he worked on the A-Bomb, in Chicago with Enrico Fermi, and he tried, unsuccessfully to lobby to prevent the Bomb from being dropped on Japanese cities. The story is not great literature, but it is \very/ interesting, because Szilard, given the events in the story, very likely would have been on trial. The story is highly ironic. Trials, like the kind they had at Nuremburg, now seem incredibly self-serving. Does anyone know if a single member of the "Allies" stood trial for a "war crime"? I do not mean to condone atrocities. I think we are fooling ourselves if we try to imagine that we are that unlike 'war-criminals'. ============================================================= In a related vein, doesn't it strike you as two-faced to hear the U.S. Government accusing the Soviets of using chemical weapons in Afganistan, when they used chemical weapons in Vietnam?
trb (02/16/83)
I suspect that the reason Klaus Barbie has come to trial is that there are Nazi hunters who chased him down. Also, Barbie isn't in a position of power; that puts him in a different category than Idi Amin, who has mercenary military support, if not national military support. I wasn't alive at the time, but how widely known was Barbie? If he was very widely known, I wouldn't think that Barbie dolls would have been so named. I never heard of him before. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491