I’ve been increasingly unhappy with Biden’s new habit of getting up on his moral high ground, because it’s hardly high ground, or even a “bump.”
Biden has a pretty substantial history of committing war crimes so I suppose “trust me – I know what war crimes are, because Barack Obama and I did a bunch of them” is a sort of an argument. But it’s a bad argument.
I’m not saying that Putin’s not committing war crimes. War is a war crime. The US victors’ court decided that at Nuremberg – waging offensive war is a crime punishable by death. There are a lot of words thrown around about offensive warfare, pre-emptive warfare, defensive warfare but the fact is that anyone involved in starting a war has advance knowledge that there will be incidents, however regrettable, in which civilians will be killed, prisoners taken and abused, areas bombarded, etc. In fact there are many aspects of modern warfare that are inherently criminal, e.g.: the use of weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare, or biological warfare. The US, headed by Biden (right now) is the global master of hypocrisy in this matter – were not the tons of dioxin dumped on Vietnam chemical warfare? And is not the US the world’s dominant deployer of nuclear weapons? Even recently the US was using chemical warfare in Iraq in the form of CS gas and white phosphorus artillery (used against hospitals) It seems almost insignificant to mention the ground-breaking work Obama and Biden did regarding the use of mechanical assassination drones, ignoring the lines where conflict was happening, to personally assassinate “terrorists” weddings full of civilians.
The American drone-presidents made the entire world a conflict-zone in which faceless bureaucrats and a president can mete out death at any moment, with no recourse or defense. Then, it turns out the death was undeserved; someone committed the mortal crime of driving the same color car as some other person who was a target. Wrapped up in that is the implicit assumption that the other person was also a legitimate target (which is a violation of the Westphalian principle that a state has jurisdiction within its borders and other nations are specifically prohibited from carrying out military or police actions within those borders.) The US has literally elected itself “global cop” and then incessantly complains “we aren’t the world’s police.” No, we’re criminals; the world’s police are the ICC which we explicitly hold ourselves above.
[cnbc]
President Joe Biden on Monday called for evidence to be gathered to put Russian leader Vladimir Putin on trial for war crimes related to his nation’s invasion of Ukraine.
“He is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin, on the heels of reports of mass killings of civilians by Russian-controlled troops in the town of Bucha, northwest of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv.
“This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone’s seen it,” Biden told reporters, a day after video and still images revealed the town’s streets littered with dead bodies.
“I think it is a war crime … He should be held accountable.”
This is the same jackass who immediately forgave US forces for shooting a hellfire missile at an aid worker (“well, he looked like a bad guy!”) in Afghanistan after an ISIS suicide bomber triggered a gigantic cluster-fuck that featured terror-crazed US Marines pouring automatic weapons fire into a crowd of civilians. Biden has no right to talk about accountability for others.
“Accountability” means something like – “capable of being brought to account for their actions” i.e.: defend what you did. Putin recently withdrew Russia from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, but the US has never accepted the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. In fact, the US has done some really sketchy, ridiculous things to place itself beyond the ICC’s reach – including passing legislation that requires the US to commit a war crime by using military force to retrieve any Americans that are brought in front of the ICC in The Hague. In other words, the framing is: war criminal who holds himself as having impunity from criminal court calls for accountability for another war criminal who just also maneuvered to hold himself as not being subject to the criminal court.
I’m going to say it: the US’ attitude, and Biden’s specific statements, serve only to erode the legitimacy of the ICC, and to demolish the US’ presumed high ground in these matters. The US has no politician who can say, with a straight face, that someone is a “war criminal” because its politicians have placed themselves above having to respond to the same charge. You don’t get to blather about holding people responsible in a court that you claim you’re not subject to.
One final point on that last sentence: one of the popular defensive moves made by the nazi leadership at Nuremberg was “this court has no jurisdiction over me!” And the court’s response was, “you may believe that we don’t, but we believe that we do.” That same argument ought to apply to Putin and Biden and Obama and Bush and Cheney and Clinton and every goddamn one of them: it doesn’t matter if you believe the court has jurisdiction over you, it’s the court’s beliefs that matter. A student of history, which Biden is not, would be at least somewhat red-faced to assume the same defensive line as Hermann Göring. It’s a bad look. Everyone in the world should be pointing this out, constantly and loudly, every time Biden or Putin approach a microphone. Wouldn’t it be great, if someone always asked Biden that same question, “when will the US acknowledge that it is subject to the ICC?” every time he appeared in public? We should treat these contemptible hypocritical bastards with the contempt they have earned. [icc]
At present 123 nations have ratified the Rome Statute and are members of the ICC Assembly of States Parties. While the United States played a central role in the establishment of the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the United States is not a State Party. Building upon positive developments at the end of the George W. Bush administration, the US-ICC relationship significantly progressed during the Barack Obama administration, with the US providing varied and important support to the Court to the fullest extent allowed under existing US law. However, the policies of the Donald Trump administration highlighted a much more complicated relationship between the Untied States and the ICC.
That’s diplomatic language. But let’s follow Biden’s lead and speak frankly. My version:
At present 123 nations have ratified the Rome Statute and are members of the ICC Assembly of States Parties. While the United States played a central role in the establishment of the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the United States is too fond of committing war crimes to ratify the statute. The United States, a rogue superpower, insists that it is above the law but, in fact, 123 nations agree that it does fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction in accordance with the precedents set at Nuremberg.
Putin should promise a full and impartial investigation, wait 10 seconds while looking at his watch, and then announce that a special court had cleared the Russian soldiers of any wrongdoing. More or less what the US DOD does.
Yeah, this was pretty much what I thought when I read Biden’s blather, which I summed up as “he’s got a fucking cheek”.
I tend towards the practical cynical end of international politics. From that perspective these statements are bad also because they are making it less likely that Putin will back out. If he is going to be trapped in Russia and Russia economically isolated for the rest of his life win or lose, he might as well tough it out and win. He might even come to the conclusion that brutally winning is the best way to hold on to power in Russia.
“it’s the court’s beliefs that matter.”
No. The only people whose beliefs matter are the ones with the nuclear weapons.
Back in the day, there were several ‘liberal’ blogs I gave up on (both commenting and reading) because of the “it was a war crime when Dubya did it, but Obama is defending our freedoms” bullshit. The mockery aimed at anyone who questioned the received wisdom (including yours truly) was disgusting.
That our ‘leaders’ were (or could reasonably be assumed to be) lying hypocritical douchebags* hasn’t been in doubt for me since I was a teenager. That people I saw as “on my side” could blindly ignore the double standard was immensely disappointing. So…
If war criminal A calls war criminal B a war criminal, I don’t even roll my eyes anymore. Can we get rid of A? No? Can we get rid of B? Maybe? OK!
*’Lying hypocritical douchebag’ has been a prerequisite for statecraft since there were two states.
Rob Grigjanis@#4:
Back in the day, there were several ‘liberal’ blogs I gave up on (both commenting and reading) because of the “it was a war crime when Dubya did it, but Obama is defending our freedoms” bullshit. The mockery aimed at anyone who questioned the received wisdom (including yours truly) was disgusting.
Agreed. I dropped off Daily Kos for that reason.
It’s amazing to me how people can politicize something like “this is monstrous” into “this is monstrous but you can’t criticize our guy for doing it because the opposition will take advantage of any disunity.” It seems to me to be almost always partisans of one side or the other that sing that song.
If war criminal A calls war criminal B a war criminal, I don’t even roll my eyes anymore. Can we get rid of A? No? Can we get rid of B? Maybe? OK!
It blows my mind that the people of the world have not risen up and guillotined the douchebags. Oh, shit, there I go sounding like Robespierre again. But I’m gonna say that the man had a point, though his methods ultimately failed.
sonofrojblake@#3:
The only people whose beliefs matter are the ones with the nuclear weapons.
I’m not going to buy that.
Sure, there is a thin political crust of people who have arrogated control of the nuclear weapons, but those people are vulnerable in turn to their security forces. Some US Secret Service goon could pop a bullet into the president and veto a nuclear first strike. But those people are not political actors, themselves – they’re latent political actors, or something like that.
The question of “who controls the world” is insane but I ask it often. My answer is that we live in a web of relationships and control of the world is an emergent behavior of those relationships. That means there is a self-healing system that will adapt, and the end result is always control of the world. If some heroes of civilization did unilaterally kill all the important politicians, there would just be another wave of politicians behind them, who would have a different system for personal security; the system would continue to evolve toward safety for the rulers and global rule.
Of course, if I were planetary overlord, I’d break the cycle. Hahahah.
You misunderstand me.
From your point of view, you’re talking about a situation where the people with the direct control of the nuclear weapons are killed and replaced by some people who previously didn’t have direct control over nuclear weapons… but nevertheless lived and worked in a situation where those weapons are primed and ready.
But from an outside point of view, one of the people with nuclear weapons who can therefore ignore the court killed/got killed by one of the other people with nuclear weapons who can ignore the court. Or, put another way, from the point of view of a NON-superpower, Yanks/Russkies are all the fucking same to us. You’re the baddies. ALL of you. Save me the tales of your (hypothetical) internal squabbles, because whatever the result, the winners of those internal squabbles are never, ever going to finish them up with volunteering to be held accountable for something. It will be a cold day in hell before the US tolerates a citizen being charged with war crimes at the ICC. It would seem that this, among other things, is a large part of the point of having nuclear first strike capability and full spectrum dominance in the first place. Let the peasants have their little court if it makes them happy.
I would respectfully suggest that said goon would delay the launch by at most a single digit number of minutes, and wouldn’t live even that long. Some “veto”.
It’s a dangerous question to ask, because there are reasonable, non-anti-semitic arguments that look askance at the wildly disproportionate number of members of one particular vanishingly small ethnic group in positions of power, wealth and influence. But for myself, I don’t think anyone, any single group, controls the world. That’s a conspiracy theorist fantasy that I actually kind of wish was true. Imagine living somewhere where there was a cabal so intelligent, so organised, so competent, that they could run the world. It would be lovely. Meanwhile, it’s apparent that most governments can’t control the internal politics of their own parties with any great effectiveness.
For evidence of the latter, recall 2015, and the hilarious and long drawn out efforts of the Republican party to ensure that someone, ANYONE, other than Donald Trump became their candidate for President. They fucking HATED him… and nothing they could do could stop him. He dismantled the heir apparent, Jeb Bush, and one by one steamrollered the rest. This is not something that happens in a world being controlled by an effective conspiracy. It’s a fuckup, helped along by chaotic evil provocateurs like Putin.
Yes, the USA has been a shit of a country. The 1619 Project book has amplified this in my mind. Unfortunately, the principle of, ‘Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone’, only works if no one is deserving of being stoned.
Putin has commited war crimes, disagree with me if you dare.
moarscienceplz@#8:
Yes, the USA has been a shit of a country. The 1619 Project book has amplified this in my mind.
Exactly what the republicans are afraid of! You have been turned from being a loyal ‘murican into a socialist, perhaps soviet sympathizer by the injection of facts into your historical framework.
1619 really pulls things together. Charles Mann’s 1493 had that effect on me. And, of course, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History which proudly announces its intent to turn everyone communist in its very title.
Putin has committed war crimes, disagree with me if you dare.
He has ordered them, and his subordinates have committed them. I think any Nuremberg tribunal would convict him.
sonofrojblake@#7:
But for myself, I don’t think anyone, any single group, controls the world. That’s a conspiracy theorist fantasy that I actually kind of wish was true
I agree. That’s why I evolved my theory of emergent conspiracies. You can have collusion and conspiracy that are never formally begun, yet all drive toward the same end-goal.
You’re right: if there were a Secret World Government then we could negotiate with them and maybe they could make sure the trains would run on time.