The yellow ribbons are gone. All the tickertape has been swept away. The flags have been placed in mothballs until the Fourth of July. The Desert Storm T-shirts, bumper stickers, and toilet paper have been sold. One year has passed since the Gulf War, and one more war souvenir has come home to haunt America -- charges that the United States committed war crimes in the Persian Gulf.

An international group of activists refuses to let the United States escape accountability for its actions. On Feb. 29, these activists will convene the International War Crimes Tribunal in New York City. The tribunal, consisting of a panel of respected international jurists from 12 nations, will hear 19 specific charges against the United States of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. While most Americans would just as soon forget about the war, the tribunal will try to make Americans face the truth -- that the "defender of freedom" for the world has committed an unbelievable array of crimes for which it must be held accountable.

The specific charges to be raised against the United States concern its conduct before, during, and after the war. For, in the course of our glorious crusade, the United States bombed civilians indiscriminately, notably at the notorious al-Amariyah bomb shelter in Baghdad, killing a minimum of 20,000 civilians indiscriminately (in violation of Articles 51 and 57 of the Geneva Convention); targeted Iraq's infrastructure, including hospitals, food stores, sanitation plants, and electrical power plants (in violation of Article 54 of the Geneva Convention and the 1977 updates to the convention); bullied, bribed, and threatened the Security Council into rubber-stamping U.S. actions (in violation of the U.N. Charter); and used extremely excessive force in attacking Iraqi troops, resulting in a one-sided "turkey shoot" (in violation of the Nuremburg Codes). And these are but four of the charges leveled against the U.S. government -- including Powell, Cheney, Schwarzkopf, and even President Bush himself.

The United State's record of war crimes cannot simply be shoved in the closet with the yellow ribbons and Desert Storm junk. The tribunal will do its best to get out the truth about U.S. conduct. I urge everyone to seek the truth for themselves, to learn what really happened in the Gulf. If we allow the issue to die, then we will have learned nothing from the war except the prettiness of yellow ribbons.