(updated below – Update II)

Responding to the neocon objections to my post on the universality of war-justifying propaganda, Kevin Drum writes that it’s “time to repeal Godwin’s Law” — at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes — labeling it an “an endlessly tiresome way of feigning moral indignation.”  Kevin adds:  ”WWII analogies are extremely useful because they’re familiar to almost everyone.”  I agree:  the very notion that a major 20th Century event like German aggression is off-limits in political discussions is both arbitrary and anti-intellectual in the extreme.  There simply are instances where such comparisons uniquely illuminate important truths:  recall, for example, Andrew Sullivan’s consequential discovery of the stark similarities between the Bush/Cheney and Gestapo “enhanced interrogation” documents, both in terms of approved tactics and “justifications.”  To demand that German crimes be treated as sacred and unmentionable is to deprive our discourse of critical truths.

But this prohibition is even more odious than that.  A primary point of the Nuremberg Trials was to seize on the extraordinary horror of what the Germans did in order to set forth general principles to be applied not only to the individual war criminals before the tribunal, but more important, to all countries in the future.  As lead prosecutor Robert Jackson explained in his Opening Statement:

What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. . . . . And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.

There are, of course, distinctive aspects that made German crimes so appalling (from gas chambers to systematic human experimentation), but Jackson repeatedly emphasized that it was one particular common crime — aggressive war — that was at the heart of what Nuremberg was meant to prevent.  From Jackson’s Summation to the tribunal:

The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact.

And in his Opening Statement, Jackson announced the core purpose of the Trials:  “this inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times:  aggressive war.”  “Aggressive war” wasn’t just some vague rhetorical slogan.  To the contrary, Jackson explained that “the issue is one of no novelty and is one on which legal opinion has well crystalized,” and then defined it with great specificity:

[A]n “aggressor” is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions:

(1) Declaration of war upon another state; (2) Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another state; (3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another state; and (4) Provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of another state, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded state, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.

And I further suggest that it is the general view that no political military, economic, or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification for such actions; but exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a state which has been subjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression.

In light of those crystal clear Nuremberg prohibitions on ”aggressive war,” it’s easy to understand why neocons want to make any mention of all this off-limits, or why they screech like wounded hyenas every time one cites these precedents to condemn the wars they advocate and the justifications they proffer.  It’s not hyperbole to say that “Godwin’s Law” — at least as neocon ideologues have come to distort it — negates the central purpose of what was done at Nuremberg.  We were supposed to learn from and apply those principles to ourselves, not adopt a Code of Silence with regard to them.