Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t
National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan, where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial, as well. The entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other than bullets.
Now, an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court's pick from the assortment of war criminals. Why al-Bashir?
Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn't the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?
Bush and Blair's crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf, at least in the number of deaths and displaced persons, the terrible situation in Darfur. The highest estimate of Darfur casualties is 400,000, one-third the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush's invasion. Moreover, the conflict in the Sudan is an internal one, whereas Bush illegally invaded two foreign countries—war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard.
Bush's war crimes were enabled by the political leaders of the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada and Australia. The leaders of every member of the "coalition of the willing to commit war crimes" are candidates for the dock.
But of course the Great Moral West does not commit war crimes. War crimes are charges fobbed off on people demonized by the Western media, such as the Serbian Slobodan Milosevic and the Sudanese al-Bashir.
Every week, the Israeli government evicts Palestinians from their homes, steals their land, and kills Palestinian women and children. These crimes against humanity have been going on for decades. Except for a few Israeli human rights organizations, no one complains about it. Palestinians are defined as "terrorists," and "terrorists" can be treated inhumanely without complaint.
Iraqis and Afghans suffer the same fate. Iraqis who resist U.S. occupation of their country are "terrorists." Taliban is a demonized name. Every Afghan killed—even those attending wedding parties—is claimed to be Taliban by the U.S. military. Iraqis and Afghans can be murdered at will by American and NATO troops without anyone raising human rights issues.
The International Criminal Court is a bureaucracy. It has a budget, and it needs to do something to justify its budget. Lacking teeth and courage, it goes after the petty war criminals and leaves the big ones alone.
Don't get me wrong. I'm for holding all governments accountable for their criminal actions. It is the hypocrisy to which I object. The West gives itself and Israel a pass, while damning everyone else. Even human rights groups fall into the trap. Rights activists don't see the buffoonery in their complaint that President Bush, who has violated more human rights than any person alive, is letting China off the hook for human rights abuses by attending the Olympics hosted by China.
President Bush claims that the enormous destruction and death he has brought to Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary in order for Americans to be safe. If we are accepting excuses this feeble, Milosevic passed muster with his excuse that as the head of state he was obliged to try to preserve the state's territorial integrity. Is al-Bashir supposed to accept secession in the Sudan, something that Abraham Lincoln would not accept from the Confederacy? How long would al-Bashir last if he partitioned Sudan?
Last October, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a photo on its front page above the fold of an elderly man with mikes shoved in his face. Paul Henss, 85 years old, is being deported from the United States, where he has lived for 53 years, because Eli Rosenbaum, director the U.S. State Department's Nazi-hunting bureaucracy, declared him a war criminal for training guard dogs used at German concentration camps. Henss was 22 years old when World War II ended.
A kid who trained guard dogs is being deported as a war criminal, but the head of state who launched two wars of naked aggression, resulting in the deaths of more than 1.2 million people, and who has the entire world on edge awaiting his third war of aggression, this time against Iran, is received respectfully by foreign governments. Corporations and trade associations will pay him $100,000 per speech when he leaves office. He will make millions of dollars more from memoirs written by a ghostwriter.
Does no one see the paradox of deporting Henss while leaving the war criminal in the White House?
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Actually Blair is more of a war criminal than Bush. Hes been involved in more illegal wars than Bush including the aerial bombardment of Iraq in 1998 when when Saddam refused to let UN weapons inspectors visit facilities because they were giving the intelligence to the Israelis.
Plus the fact that London is home to major terrorists organisation than any other place on earth incluing ones even banned by Arab states that operate in Afica, Former Yugoslavia, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, India and Central Asia all under the eyes of MI6.
Well put. And today we hear of the arrest of Karadzic, another "war criminal" whose real crime was to oppose the imperial policies of the US and its entourage of client states. If they don't have the evidence to convict him, they'll just keep the trial going and keep him in prison until he dies as they did with Milosevic.
@3Kirt Higdon
And what about Amnesty International in all this.
They pressure Serbia to give up alledged war criminals to the Hague although most of the actual war criminals were bosnian muslim commanders like Nasir Oric who bragged out leading miltants to kill Serb villages in Bosnia probably killed hundreds of unarmed civilians yet gets a suspend sentence and walks free and Amnesty saids dick.
They only have to read the transcripts of the Hague trail of Milosevic to see how farcical it is yet again they say dick.
Karadzic will get as fair a trail as Ernst Zundel did in Germany were his lawyer got sentenced to 3 1/2 years for putting up a good defence for her client.
If its anything like Human Rights Watch's board of directors http://www.rusjournal.com/ngos.html no wonder theres an anti-Serb bias.
"These crimes against humanity have been going on for decades."
"Iraqis and Afghans can be murdered at will by American and NATO troops without anyone raising human rights issues."
"President Bush, who has violated more human rights than any person alive, is letting China off the hook for human rights abuses by attending the Olympics hosted by China."
"I’m for holding all governments accountable for their criminal actions. It is the hypocrisy to which I object... Even human rights groups fall into the trap."
Perhaps it is the case that the culture of "human rights" (the notion of which, as conceived as by the UN and Amnesty International, is manifestly false and a cheap parody of Christian peace to boot) is intrinsically and irredeemably flawed, ill-conceived and incompetent to effect positive long-term change?
"President Bush, who has violated more human rights than any person alive,"
Really?? You're going to go with "more...than any person alive" there?
Do you think outlandish hyperbole helps the case? Let's punish our homegrown war criminals, but only in matter of crimes for which they actually are responsible, shall we?
How great a distance is there between Sherman's war crimes and the incineration of women and children on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 'Might makes right' and 'ends justify means' has replaced any Christian compassion or restraint. Throw into the mix 'money is power' and warfare no longer holds any semblance of 'civilized' as a result, thus negating any meaning whatsoever of the abstract 'progress'. Hypocracy, deceit, and arrogance are poor substitutes for the concrete.
Is it also possible that the Sudan has oil which is primarily being developed by the Chinese (with all those excess Yankee dollars before they become worthless) who possess nuclear weapons and interballistic missiles up the ying yang and therefore cannot be attacked directly?
Well said, Dr. Roberts!
Washington is the New Nineveh; the US has become the New Assyria. Read Nahum.
Since Congress is failing in its duty to impeach George is it really any surprise that the ICC would fail to charge him. We have fallen as a nation and apparently justice does not exist in the world. Is it time to tune our violins?
Let's not get hysterical about the issue. FDR incarcerated more than a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans and bombed civilians in Dresden and Tokyo where hundreds of thousands died.
Yet he is worshipped here (and would still be president if he hadn't died).
The Muslims will win because they take no prisoners and spare no civilians. Meanwhile we wallow in self doubt and irresolution about who the enemy is.