Friday, October 07, 2005



A step towards global justice

The International Criminal Court made an important step towards global justice today by issuing its first arrest warrants, against the leadership of the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA has been fighting the Ugandan government for 25 years, and has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including torture, rape, massacres, and the abduction and forced recruitment of child-soldiers. They're certainly deserving of being one of the ICC's first cases.

Hopefully, the ICC will eventually gain the confidence to set its sights a little higher - such as on those responsible for the invasion of Iraq...

13 comments:

Pitt: Well, there's waging a war of aggression - defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal as "the supreme international crime". That's one of the things the ICC is supposed to cover (as well as torture, which the US uses sytematically in its "war on terror") - but hopefully their time will come. The ICC is hardly short of people to prosecute...

As for the new Iraqi government, you may want to check out this or this or this. It's hardly an improvement to simply change the victims of torture...

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 10/07/2005 03:20:00 PM

As implied by icehawk - the ICC only has a limited amount of power it cant spend all its effort chasing the USA over his attempts to liberate iraq unless it wants to locate itself somwhere between totally ineffectual and non existant.

If the ICC solves all the problems with all the smaller countries that will be a good start.

Posted by Genius : 10/07/2005 06:33:00 PM

"..those responsible for the invasion of Iraq..."

That would Saddam and co.

You forget Idiot, with your reference to wars of agression, that times have changed. Nations are no longer sovereign in the way they were considered back in 1945. Then it was the case that if a brutal regime did not invade another counrty nothing could done about that regime as invading would indeed be a crime.

But now there is a growing international consensus that soveriegnty is not absolute and that governments have a duty of care to their citizens AND other coutries have a duty to intervene if that duty of care is not upheld. It's an extention of that old left wing thing - solidarity.

So actually there will be no case to be made against the US and UK. Internatinal law evolves.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/07/2005 10:48:00 PM

But maybe there would be the basis for a case against France, Russia and China who failed in the obligation to defend people from a dictatorship.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/07/2005 10:54:00 PM

The international court could prosecute UN officials for their child-s*x rings whilst being stationed in Africa. The're already in the neighbourhood after all.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2005 02:43:00 AM

Savant wrote, "..those responsible for the invasion of Iraq..."

Sock Thief wrote, "That would Saddam and co."

It's always someone else's fault isn't Sock? When somebody attacks us they're responsible. When we attack somebody they're responsible.

When I asked one of Sock Thief's fellow bankrupts on my blog who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children through brutal economics sanctions and bombings, or the hundreds of thousands bombed in Vietnam and Cambodia, or the hundreds of thousands fire bombed and nuclear bombed in Japan, the answer was sadly predictable, and I quote:

"Saddam Hussein’s regime was responsible for starving his people (you would have been too, if your attempt to coerce the coalition into letting Saddam stay in power had been successful) and getting the country bombed, the Soviet Union was responsible for Vietnam and Cambodia, and Hitler and Imperial Japan for the nukes."

This is the ultimate bankruptcy of the West; the inability to see itself as anything but gods gift to the world.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2005 11:42:00 AM

Oh, here we go again...

You should try being a woman Christiann, then I imagine you'd value the unique freedoms of the West more highly. Isn't it interesting that as China becomes more Westernised, torture passing as tradition (footbinding, women as property, to name just two)becomes increasingly unsustainable. Perhaps a further dose of female identity will stop the endless abortions of female fetuses. Of course, we could talk about what they do to women in your favorite middle eastern dictatorships... For 52% of the World's population, the West offers what is so far the only robust social conditions for some sort of sexual equality. Makes it pretty damn good for me, kid.

Still, you keep watching Al Jezeera and whining here - you're amusing in your teenage ignorance...

Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2005 04:58:00 PM

Adrien, that's not really fair.

Christian made the (I think very valid point) that regardless of the extreme moral dubiousness of Saddam's regime, it wasn't him who dropped the high explosive on the largely innocent bystanders of Iraq. And let's not forget how he got to power.

America and friends do have blood on their hands in this affair, regardless of the culpability of others.

Posted by Chris : 10/08/2005 06:49:00 PM

Powell got up and transparently lied to sell a war that even its supporters have no real idea why it is being fought. The slander that opponents of this appalling war somehow supported the appalling government of Iraq is contemptable, especially since many of the war's opponents also opposed the West's support of Saddam back in the day.

France, Russia and China, whatever their undoubted realpolitic agendas, weren't asked to support a humanitarian intervention, and the idea that the government of China, of all organisations, would be persuaded by the argument that dictatorships are bad is really stupid.

So, Bush and co are war criminals, no doubt. They are profoundly unserious people who were prepared to build an electoral strategy with the blood and charred bodies of innocent Iraqis and US soldiers, and who have overseen and enabled indescriminate torture, not to mention the rollback of civil liberties in their own country.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2005 07:16:00 PM

Anon, the war was premised on a number of factors some of which turned out to be wrong. That is not equivalent to lying. I fail to see how making the allegation serves your argument.

Some on the pro-war side have made the sort of Saddam support allegations you mention. But many did not and I myself have not. On the other hand there were the likes of Galloway who's position was equivical to say the least. And many of those prominent in the anti-war movement also opposed military action against Melosevic and the Taliban. Not a good look.

Regarding France, Russia and China, as they were in fact the primary supporters of Saddam I'm not sure why you should not want them held accountable for their actions if you are so adament that the UK and US have something to answer for. Yes, it is opptomistic that the Chinese leadership would support overthrowing a dictatorship, but surely they should be judged on the basis of liberal values, not theirs. By your reasoning we would have no case against Mugabe.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2005 08:14:00 PM

Christian,
the US is responsible for its actions just like if you went out onto the street and protested you would be "responsible" for the cost of cleaning up after your protest and the damage you caused while protesting.
That doesnt mean that the US's actions or yours in protesting might not be justified.

I am concerned that you either see the USA as the devils gift to the world (worsethan zimbabae and china and saddam etc?) OR seem to think their are always easy solutions to difficult problems regardless of who the enemy is - one would think if that was the case you would have fixed the USA yourself.

Chris
> it wasn't him who dropped the high explosive on the largely innocent bystanders of Iraq.

He may however have put those innocent bystanders in harms way intentionally.
And the people dropping the bombs were pilots in aeroplanes (as opposed to anyone else) similar to the ones that dropped bombs over germany in WWII. It makes no sense to divorce actions from the context.

> And let's not forget how he got to power.

Show me the person with the psycic powers who can tell that a man will go insane and use chemical weapons on his people and annex his weak neighbour 20 years or so before he actualy does it and I'll give him my vote for global president.

Posted by Genius : 10/09/2005 01:22:00 PM

Sock, Powell lied at the UN about WMD. This led to "no" votes on the invasion (or at least no chance of yes votes that twisted arms might have eventually led to). This is little discussed, and yet seems the most obvious cause of the failure of the UN process (it was also obvious that Bush wasn't prepared to take it seriously, and nobody likes being played for a chump).

Don't get me wrong - I'm aware that those three nations have a lot to answer for over the years just like the US has, support for Hussain well and truly among it.

It is just that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible idea, and it was going to result in thousands of people being violently killed, all because some appalling lightweights in Washington had a jones. The failure to get the SC to back it meant it didn't even have the veneer of legitimacy that these things often do. And now that they've lost the damn thing too, it is their's all the way.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/09/2005 07:14:00 PM

Anon, I don't believe that Powell lied. He said things that turned out not to be true. A lot of people thought that Iraq had WMD, not just those that put the war together.

I think that you can still make the case agaist the war on the basis that the cost would be too great without the allegation of deception on the part of Bush, Blair and co.

But if oyu believed at the time thta the cost would be to great then you would have to accept that leaving Saddam in power would also have a cost and that at some point his regime would collapse. And if we look at Yugoslavia, then maybe US and UK intervention was just goling to be delayed.

Posted by Anonymous : 10/09/2005 11:06:00 PM