From: Jim Devine
From: Juan Cole The only way you even got laws against torture is that they were self-interested-- forbidding one's own troops to torture is a way of trying to prevent their being tortured when captured by the enemy (and ensuring there is punishment, a la Nuremburg, for war crimes. ^^^^^^^ CB: I'm not sure that the impetus to the US Eighth Amendment was not "morality" rather than self-interest: "Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. " The main German crime was mass murder, not torture, no ? ^^^^^^^ Note that Stalin wanted just to summarily execute 50,000 - 100,000 German officers. Roosevelt demurred, jesting that surely 49,000 would be enough. In the end Henry Stimson's plan for war crimes trial was approved by Truman. ^^^^^ CB: Summary execution is sort of the opposite of torture. The pain is very brief; even the pain of anticipation is brief compared to sitting on death row for a long time. "Summary" means "fast" . The criticism of Stalin here would not be for torture but denial of a trial. On the other hand, at that moment , status as a German combat officer on the Eastern Front might have been fairly good proof that one had participated in war crimes. Easy for FDR to make jokes about it. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
