War crimes are things that the powerless do

When a man with a gun steals from a bank, he's called a bank robber, and he's looking at hard time.
When a CEO steals from a bank, it's called fraud, maybe, and he has to pay a fine.
When a man with a truck bomb blows up a wedding, or a school, or a hospital, he's called a terrorist.
When a man with a Reaper drone blows up a wedding, or a school, or a hospital, it's called collateral damage.

This disparity was supposed to be partly addressed with the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). When national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals, the ICC would step in.
That was the thinking anyway.

Last week, the new chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — the only international body with the authority to prosecute individuals over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes — sought to reopen a previously suspended investigation in Afghanistan but with a caveat. The probe would not include conduct by the United States and its allies, including the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, all of which have committed crimes that fall squarely within the court’s jurisdiction.

The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, who has been on the job for just over three months, wrote in a statement that his office would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the Taliban and by the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan.
...
“This just proves one more time to Afghans that international mechanisms do not value their life when foreigners are involved and international forces are involved,” Shaharzad Akbar, who chaired Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission until the Taliban took control of the country in August, told The Intercept. “This decision reinforces the perception that these institutions set up in the West and by the West are just instruments for the West’s political agenda.”

The Taliban commits war crimes. The U.S. military does not.
Not because of the crimes, but because who is committing them.
But this disparity isn't limited to just the U.S. The Saudis also have immunity when it comes to committing war crimes.

The UN Human Rights Council voted to end the mandate of experts investigating war crimes in Yemen in a blow to Western nations who wanted the probe to continue.

The 47-member council voted against renewing the mandate of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen (GEE) on Thursday, which in August 2018 reported evidence of possible war crimes committed by all sides, including a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has been in the past accused of attempting to shut down the investigation, with Human Rights Watch in September 2018 saying Riyadh was making a “blatant attempt to avoid scrutiny” of its conduct in Yemen.

The Saudis have bombed almost every hospital in Yemen, but that isn't a war crime apparently.
Finally, let's look at Libya.

The report, which was based on research in Libya, Tunisia and Italy and interviews with over 150 people, acknowledges that the work of the mission had been obstructed by the Western-backed government in Tripoli.

While it focuses on crimes carried out between 2016 and 2020, the report begins by acknowledging: “Since the fall of the [Muammar] Gaddafi regime in 2011, the fragmentation of the State and the proliferation of weapons and of militias vying for control of territory and resources has severely undermined the rule of law in Libya. Libya has also been the theater of quasi-uninterrupted armed conflicts” resulting in crimes “against the most vulnerable, including women, children, members of ethnic minorities, migrants, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons.”

Nowhere, however, does the report refer to what precipitated the fall of the Gaddafi regime, the disintegration of both Libya’s state and its society and the resulting mass violence, i.e., the more than seven-month war of aggression launched by the United States and NATO in March of 2011.

While I'm sure there's been war crimes since 2016, the war started 5 years earlier.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

We CANNOT just accept "this is the way it is". We CANNOT just give up on the international rule of law.

We've worked too hard, too long, and witnessed too much wrong, to let the Bush Regime win.

FIAT JUSTICIA RUUAT CAELUM

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

dystopian's picture

Seeming like the ICC was for prosecuting American and Israel's enemies, and to be disbanded and disregarded as soon as the merry go round and point in the other direction. Disgusting.
It is criminal what they have done to the criminal court. Now what can ya do? There is no justice.

pro tip: steal with the pen, not the sword.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

How is this CIA-written policy not the legacy of Allen Dulles, who supported fascism in WWII?

We are living in a military industrial dictatorship, a country whose foreign policy is manifested in wanton violence against civilians with no accountability or control by Congress.

We are free to speak our minds but prohibited from making any difference in what this deep state killing machine does. Openly, they show us they are controlling our elections, our Congress, and our Supreme Court through the power of their wealth.

And this wealth is completely created through their ability to print money for themselves out of thin air. A tax strike won't stop them. A labor strike won't stop them. They are running their own Federal Reserve printing press, which is essentially an imaginary currency.

At the moment, I am out if ideas. But if we don't figure out how to stop them, the people of the rest of the world have to do it, and I think we all know that won't end well for us.

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