Jay Janson: U.S. Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor Would Have Proudly Prosecuted McCain As a War Criminal

[Jay Janson: Musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.]

Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials is reported as having said that he would be proud to lead the prosecution of U.S. pilots captured in Vietnam.

Robert Richter, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, and political director for CBS News from 1965 to 1968 recently wrote in Bomber Pilot McCain: War Heroism or War Crimes? published by Institute for Public Accuracy, October 15, 2008, writes,

"I will never forget how stunned I was when Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, told me that he strongly supported the idea of trying the U.S. pilots captured in North Vietnam as war criminals -- and that he would be proud to lead in their prosecution."

Richter notes that

"McCain has repeatedly invoked his record in the Vietnam War during the campaign, but that the effect of bomber pilots like McCain and of the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign has not been sufficiently scrutinized.

An ardent opponent of the Vietnam conflict, Taylor spoke with me in the fall of 1966 when I was looking into producing a documentary on this controversy for CBS News, where I was their National Political Editor. While he did not mention any pilot's name, then U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain, who was captured a year later, would have been among the group Taylor wanted to prosecute. ...

Taylor's argument was that their actions were in violation of the Geneva conventions that specifically forbid indiscriminate bombing that could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects. Adding to the Geneva code, he noted, was the decision at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two: military personnel cannot defend themselves against such a charge with a claim that they were simply following orders."

The charge that U.S. pilots also had bombed hospitals and other civilian targets, turned out to be correct and was confirmed by the New York Times' chief foreign correspondent, Harrison Salisbury.

"In late 1966 Salisbury described the widespread devastation of civilian neighborhoods around Hanoi by American bombs: 'Bomb damage ... extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway ... small villages and hamlets along the route [were] almost obliterated'. ..."In one of his autobiographies McCain wrote that he was going to bomb a power station in 'a heavily populated part of Hanoi' when he was shot down. ...

Don't expect the Vietnam government to release any records of how many men, women and children were killed or maimed during the twenty-three bombing sorties of pilot John McCain. The Vietnamese have put the generations of war behind them now and look to the future and the enjoyment of their lives, after suffering under years punishing economic sanctions by a vengeful U.S. government and its allies.

It is up to decent Americans to use their imaginations as to the results of McCain's bombings, and also to consider that McCain presently runs in an election for the presidency of his nation; his aerial attacks were meant to assure that Ho Chi Minh would never have such an opportunity. Four years before young pilot McCain began what would be his 23 bombing of Hanoi, Eisenhower had confessed in his Mandate for Change that Ho, the hero of his country would have won 80%+ of an all Vietnam election, had Ike not had it blocked. ...