The Godwin Law: Some Nazi References Are Tougher to Avoid Than Others

You're probably aware of the Godwin Law, invoked when the discussion of a topic makes any reference to Nazi Germany. It represents a sort of spinning out in the analogy department, and brings the debate to a halt. Here's an interesting case though. It's a discussion of the Iraq War as a war crime, and the Godwin Law is overruled because the person making the claim was a chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. Sort of tough to avoid the Nazi Germany topic in a case like this, isn't it?

NUREMBURG PROSECUTOR: PRIMA FACIE CASE THAT U.S. IS "GUILTY OF THE
SUPREME CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, THAT BEING AN ILLEGAL WAR."

JAN FREL, ALTERNET - Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the
Nuremberg Trials successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work
in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people
in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to
become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding
war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg
trials and later the commission that established the International
Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm

Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United
States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an
illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary
of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the
United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War
II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the
permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in
connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in
anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council
resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to
Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll
figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided
to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United
States went to war, in violation of the charter."