genocide

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Those are not the words of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Assad, or Putin. Those are the words of the President of the USA.

I know some, more than one is too many, will say that you need to understand the circumstances, or he was joking or exaggerating. And the current US President is known for saying stuff that is not true. And yes, political speech involves emotions, personalities, and politics. 

But nothing excuses that sentence. The reason the world has a convention on genocide, is to define certain actions as always and definitively wrong.

Is the opening sentence “only words”? No, they are not “only words.” Every historian of war and mass atrocity knows that there is no such thing as “only words.” The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed.

Whatever happens tonight (7 April 1026), the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely. 

• He has changed Americans. He has changed the USA. That is true whether you voted for him or not. 
• He has changed other people and countries around the world. As Canadians, we need to say, firmly and directly, that this is wrong.

This, sadly, is not the world's first genocide. But having the US President calling for genocide is worse than the many atrocities the US has committed in the past. Neither the evil nor the good in our history determines who we are. It is what we do now.

If we, as Americans, Canadians, and, citizens around the world, do not say something ourselves about this horror, we are all complicit in this.

The President has people around him, who, sadly, work deliberately to normalize the language of genocide. Hopefully, there will be others who find the right words to reject it. And we hope and pray that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office. And these words should lead to resignations by everyone who works closely with and supports the president.

But if the last few months have shown us anything, it is we cannot count on politicians to do what is right. As citizens we need to speak up. 

• Americans call your leaders
• Canadians call our federal leaders

For our own sake, for the sake of our countries, for the sake of Iranians, for the sake of the world which is under threat.

LATE NEWS

Trump has decided to postpone the illegal attack on Iranians for two weeks, although based on his other statements, we cannot tell if he will hold to that or not. 

But whatever happens going forward, this "war" is now legally defined by the president’s statement. In the practical application of the law of genocide, the Genocide Convention of 1948, the difficulty is usually in proving “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Henceforth, the intent is on the record, in the published words of the president of the United States and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces about the death of “a whole civilization.”

Article III of the Genocide Convention makes it clear that not only the person who issues the genocidal order is guilty. Genocide itself is of course a crime, where genocide means the intent that Trump expressed, and actions such as killing members of a group, causing members of a group serious harm, or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” - which would of course include actions such as destroying access to energy or water. But also defined as a crime are conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.

There are good ethical and political reasons to reject the president’s words. But those who serve in government, and in the armed forces, have been placed under the legal shadow of genocide by what Trump wrote. To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state.

The president of the US speaks genocide.
And so we too must speak.
Not only about crimes, but about their legal punishment.