Walter J. Rockler, a Washington lawyer who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal following World War II, believes that war crimes law applies to the U.S. for its bombing of Yugoslavia. In the May 23rd edition of the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Rockler says that “As justification for our murderously destructive bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, it is of course necessary for the U.S. to charge that the Serbs have engaged in inhuman conduct, and that President Slobodan Milosevic, the head Serb demon, is a war criminal almost without peer.”

Mr. Rockler adds that “[w]e have engaged in a flagrant military aggression, ceaselessly attacking a small country primarily to demonstrate that we run the world. The rationale that we are simply enforcing international morality, even if it were true, would not excuse the military aggression and widespread killing that it entails. It also does not lessen the culpability of the authors of this aggression.”

Guest:

• Walter J. Rockler, a Washington lawyer who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. He also worked at the Office of Special Investigations at the U.S. Justice Department, which denaturalized Nazi war criminals.