Did you know that George W. Bush, even as he was preparing to hawk the opening of his Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, was convicted of war crimes?

Just a month after his conviction, ribbon cutting ceremonies opened his Presidential Center. There is beauty – architectural with “Freedom Hall,” a 20-foot tall, 360-degree HD video wall, and natural with a “Wildflower Meadow,” six acres of native prairie-plant “communities” where you can gambol with your kids and grandkids. There is also deception, reminiscent of his administration’s days with propaganda minister Karl Rove.

As expected, the library is somewhat of a chamber of self-promotion, for example, featuring memorabilia like the megaphone used by Bush at Ground Zero. But an interactive theater features a hypothetical decision exercise, a decision-points game. One relates to his Iraqi War decision. It guides you with a heavy hand and the same misinformation leading up to the war’s beginning in 2003, to a preferred war decision, a noble-sounding choice of “Lead International Coalition.” If you dare choose a wimpish “Take no action,” a contemporary Bush sternly lectures you.

But though past members of his administration, including Bush himself, attempt to rewrite history in books, speeches and presidential libraries, these egregious efforts aren’t the reason for the convictions.

In early April, 2013, the American corporate media took no notice of the conviction of former President, George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and five members of the Bush legal staff — in absentia — of war crimes at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois College of Law, was part of the prosecution team getting the conviction.

Boyle earlier pushed prosecution in Canada, Switzerland, Spain and Germany. The United States government has applied enormous pressure to both the Spanish government and the German government not to prosecute. Boyle will be attempting to get the Malaysia conviction enforced in all other states that are parties to the Convention against Torture as well as parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The latter includes almost all nations in the world.

We are tempted to slough off the convictions, along with the major American media, but should we? After all, all principal players in the Bush administration have admitted torture and we could easily define the Iraqi war as a war of aggression, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, not to speak of the suffering and death of our own troops.

Many of our leaders and non-leaders (Wall Street) are [were] not blameless, including Nixon, LBJ, and President Obama, but is there a limit of suffering and death – by numbers, by arrogance, by incompetence, by design? Certainly recent evidence – in Dirty Wars, for example — draws out these arguments.

War crimes, under international law, found in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and affirmed by a unanimous resolution of the General Assembly of the UN, involves violations of the laws or customs of war which include murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave labor, or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

Only featured for history, definition and comparison, the most gruesome and famous prosecution under “Nuremberg” precepts were after WWII. The September 30, 1946 Nuremberg trial of 22 major Nazi war criminals involved charges of (1) Conspiracy to wage wars of aggression; (2) initiating or waging wars of aggression (crimes against peace); (3) war crimes; and (4) crimes against humanity. Some of the indictments and sentences follow:

Key

My concern is that ignoring crimes against humanity of any scope because of the power and importance of their perpetrators only invites more lawlessness in high places and more cynicism in lower places – all contributing to the evaporation of democratic principles that have guided our society for several hundred years, and which have provided a hopeful prescription for others to follow.