Crimes of War - by Richard Falk & Irene Gendzier & Robert Jay Lifton (Paperback)

About the Book

"Crimes of War--Iraq" provides a comprehensive legal, historical, and psychological exploration of the war in Iraq from the same editorial team whose 1971 "Crimes of War" was a landmark book about Vietnam and the revelation of American war crimes. The editors apply standards of international criminal law, as set forth at Nuremberg after World War II, and by subsequent developments regarding individual responsibility and accountability. These principles have to do with the waging of aggressive war, attacks on civilian centers of population, rights of resistance against an illegal occupation, and the abuse of prisoners.
Explorations of psychology and human behavior include levels of motivation and response in connection with torture at Abu Ghraib; the phenomenon of the atrocity-producing situation in both Vietnam and Iraq (in which counter-insurgency, military policies, and angry grief could cause ordinary people to participate in atrocities); the behavior of doctors and medics in colluding in torture at Abu Ghraib; emerging testimony of American veterans of Iraq concerning the confusions of the mission, and the widespread killing of civilians; and accounts of broadening unease and psychological disturbance among men and women engaged in combat.

Book Synopsis

Crimes of War -- Iraq provides a comprehensive legal, historical, and psychological exploration of the war in Iraq from the same editorial team whose 1971 Crimes of War was a landmark book about Vietnam and the revelation of American war crimes. The editors apply standards of international criminal law, as set forth at Nuremberg after World War II, and by subsequent developments regarding individual responsibility and accountability. These principles have to do with the waging of aggressive war, attacks on civilian centers of population, rights of resistance against an illegal occupation, and the abuse of prisoners. Explorations of psychology and human behavior include levels of motivation and response in connection with torture at Abu Ghraib; the phenomenon of the atrocity-producing situation in both Vietnam and Iraq (in which counter-insurgency, military policies, and angry grief could cause ordinary people to participate in atrocities); the behavior of doctors and medics in colluding in torture at Abu Ghraib; emerging testimony of American veterans of Iraq concerning the confusions of the mission, and the widespread killing of civilians; and accounts of broadening unease and psychological disturbance among men and women engaged in combat.

About the Author

Robert Jay Lifton is the visiting professor of psychiatry at Harvard. From 1995 he has been conducting psychological research on the problem of apocalyptic violence. He is the author of many books including Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. He lives in Boston.

Richard Falk, chair of the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, is the author of Religion and Humane Global Governance and, most recently, The Great Terror War. He lives in Washington DC.