Religious Studies Talk

al92653 · Guest

Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don't

By Paul Craig Roberts

16/07/08 "ICH" -- - 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 UN 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 UK, 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 Milosovic 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 US 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 US 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, Milosovic 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 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 US, where he has lived for 53
years, because Eli Rosenbaum, director the the US 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?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during
the Reagan Administration, is a former associate editor of the Wall Street
Journal and coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

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