Consequences, Consequences, Consequences

Indicted For War Crimes, Sudan Cites U.S. As Example Why It Needn’t Comply

Last week, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed charges for the first time against a sitting head of state, charging President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan with three counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes. Fareed Zakaria had Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations on his CNN show, GPS, to discuss the charges, which he called “a joke” and cited the U.S.’ 2002 withdrawal from the ICC treaty as an example of why Sudan does not recognize the court’s authority and will not cooperate with it:

ZAKARIA: Will your government mount a defense in the International Criminal Court?

MOHAMAD: We have no relation with the International Criminal Court. We don’t recognize its authority. We are not going to cooperate with it.

ZAKARIA: But of course, you know that other governments that did not recognize the Criminal Court were still forced to extradite their leaders. I’m thinking of Yugoslavia.

MOHAMAD: No. I don’t care about them. As far as we are concerned, we are not members. We have been told these days repeatedly that the ICC is an independent body. And so, OK, if it’s an independent body, I am not a U.N. organ. We have full right to be part of it or not. And we choose not to be part of it, like the United States. …(full transcript)

Complicating the ICC’s ability to pursue war crimes charges, as referenced in the interview by Sudan’s UN ambassador, is President Bush’s “unsigning” of the International Criminal Court treaty in 2002. Though President Bush has publicly denounced the killings in Sudan as genocide, the administration has soft-pedaled sanctions against the Sudanese government to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan, once a safe haven for bin Laden that has become a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan.

So the obvious question is: will the deciders (at the very least) behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars be ever brought to justice?

After all, it is the deciders who send the troops to war, who establish the rules of engagement, as well as of the treatment of captives (civilian or otherwise).

Unfortunately, the answer to the question is not bloody likely:

For indeed - the Bush administration (to the man and woman) signed on to implement torture of detainees.

And both the House and Senate ended up supporting it all.

And, indirectly, all of this was likewise supported by the American people who elected those political cowards, calculators and outright incompetents - from 2000 through 2006.

Through it all - the wars, the reports of torture and other war crimes, the revelations of the lies and illegalities from the Bush administration - the elected representatives of the U.S.A. and, by proxy, the American people, not only did nothing to impeach this administration but instead passed the necessary laws to essentially provide retroactive protection from prosecution to this same administration.

That is, in essence, what history will record and what the rest of the world will remember.

Now, if you think that any member of the Bush administration will be instead prosecuted by another country (or even The Hague International Court) for their war crimes, I say to you "guess again" (emphasis mine):

August 2003:

U.S. President George Bush signed into law the American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002, which is intended to intimidate countries that ratify the treaty for the International Criminal Court (ICC). The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague. This provision is dubbed the "Hague invasion clause".

In other words: the U.S.A. has already threatened officially to go to war in order to prevent any American from being prosecuted for war crimes in another country - even an allied one.