The incitement to genocide is a verbal attempt to exhort, persuade, encourage, and provoke the audience and troops to killing members of the target group. Part of the incitement is to dehumanize the target group, showing through words that the target group is subhuman, a threat, dangerous, and worthless. The President paints the target religious group as “dangerous enemies,” one that is “driven by a perverted vision of Islam,” that espouses “hateful ideology,” that “will not leave us alone,” that “will follow us,” and one that will use “the weapons of mass destruction.” These descriptions of the target group cause fear, anger, and arousal, urging the audience and troops to do something, including killings. Since the group is defined in a broad manner, the incitement to kill provides no specifics. It cultivates combat and preemption through any means necessary, including physical elimination of the group.

Furthermore, the President constantly uses the language of war to crush the target religious group. To defeat the group’s Islamic ideology, the President is proposing no cultural dialogue, seminars, or other peaceful means. The President is speaking of military action and a permanent war. Examine the following statements delivered in the 9/11speech, making it crystal clear that the purpose of incitement is none else but killings, embodied in the metaphor and reality of war: “America will stay in the fight.” “We are in a war that will set the course for this new century.” It “will not be over until we or the extremists emerge victorious.” As if the incitement to physical elimination of the religious group were still unclear, the President specifically addresses the audience and troops and calls them to action. The “decisive” battle of the 21st century, says the President, is the “calling of our generation.”

Requisite Intent

Genocide crimes, including the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide, are intentional crimes. These are not crimes of omission or negligence.  The Genocide Convention demands that intent of the perpetrator be shown in commission of the listed crimes. The incitement crime does not occur if a person’s speech comes across as genocidal against a defined group, but the speaker has no intent to produce mass murder. Without intent, the provocation may still be regarded as odious and morally reprehensible. But it does not constitute the crime of genocide-incitement.

The incitement to genocide is a verbal attempt to exhort, persuade, encourage, and provoke the audience and troops to killing members of the target group. 

However, intent is not a purely subjective state of mind that only the perpetrator knows.  Intent is derived from the context in which the incitement is relayed to the audience and troops.

No one would dispute that the President intends war when he says war. War means killing. He is not using the word war only in the ideological sense. The President fuses military and ideological wars to constitute an organic unit.  One war supports the other. Throughout his 9/11speech, the President refers to intentional killings of the religious group. “We put al Qaeda on the run, and killed or captured most of those who planned the 9/11 attacks.”  The President continues to defend the illegal and intentional invasion of Iraq, which has killed hundreds of innocent Muslims. Speaking of exterminating the perverted religious group, the President adds: “America has confronted evil before, and we have defeated it -- sometimes at the cost of thousands of good men in a single battle.”

In his 9/11speech, the President uses the word “war” eleven (11) times, the word “fight or fighting” six (6) times, the word “battle” two (2 times).  Speaking of American soldiers, the President adds: “Our nation is blessed to have young Americans like these -- and we will need them.” Need them for what? Obviously, for war and battle and fighting.  The talk of killing is not accidental or even negligent. It is deliberate, cold-blooded, and even malicious. There exists evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the President intends to wipe out what he describes as the perverted religious group.

Conclusion
 
Examined in the light of the President’s direct and public incitements through his speeches, particularly the 9/11 speech, the atrocities committed by US troops, the Coalition forces, and the IDF acquire a new context. Episodes of repeated torture, Abu Gharib excesses, shootings at wedding parties in US occupied Muslim lands, frequent murders of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq---murders for which American soldiers are facing court martial and death penalty--- the IDF’s cruel and criminal destruction of Lebanon, all are related to the President’s direct and public incitements in which he repeatedly dehumanizes and criminalizes Muslims, not as individuals but as a religious group, inviting lawless action against the group.  The responsibility of the President as the commander-in-chief of the US forces might well be abstract and technical. In light of his incitements, this responsibility has become direct and tangible. The President has intentionally engaged in repeated direct and public provocations, persuasions, and exhortations to commit murderous violence against a religious group.

Ali Khan is a professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. He can be reached at: ali.khan@MWCNEWS.NET

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