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Evidence gathered, no arrests made
11-17-2016, 04:47 PM
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has evidence of "torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and rape" by foreign troops against locals.
However, the foreign troops in question are American.
Who wants to place a bet on when the trials will take place, in any court, under any juridsdiction, anywhere?
Editorial here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/america- ... -1.3854247
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The last time I looked into this particular issue, the US' policy on ICC prosecutions of American troops was to consider it an act of war, so.
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To be a bit more specific: Both Clinton and Bush refused to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification, despite Clinton having signed it, and Bush officially withdrew the US' signatory status. Obama has not restored it, nor has he either put it forward for ratification although he has engaged more closely with the Court and stated his support for it.
Current US law, as passed by Congress in 2002 and signed by Bush, prohibits all US agencies from supporting or assisting the court in any way, specifically including providing classified information to it and/or extraditing US citizens or persons in US custody to it, and prohibits its agents from carrying out investigations in the US.
The act also explicitly authorizes the use of any and all level of force necessary to liberate US citizens held by the court and prohibits US military aid to countries that are signatory to it unless they have signed agreements not to turn over US citizens to the Court.
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ECSNorway Wrote:The last time I looked into this particular issue, the US' policy on ICC prosecutions of American troops was to consider it an act of war, so. I would feel more comfortable about that policy if any prosecutions were actually taking place or had taken place.
ECSNorway Wrote:... The act also explicitly authorizes the use of any and all level of force necessary to liberate US citizens held by the court ... If anyone else did that, it would be called "aiding and abetting breaking out of jail".
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Well, Americans are special, donchyaknow. Regardless of what we do, we're the good guys, so it's allowed. Any evil automatically becomes good when it's an American doing it for America. Says so, right on the package.
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They're only warcrimes when losers do them.
When you win, it's a terrible necessity.
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Well, my take on it is that they wanted to make sure that prosecutions of American troops who are alleged to have done wrong while in the field were handled under American law and in American courts, where their constitutional rights would be respected, rather than elsewhere.
And if Clinton, Bush, and Obama all thought it wasn't the best thing - note that in twenty years not one of them has even started the process to have it ratified by the Senate - then they might just have a point.
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ECSNorway Wrote:Well, my take on it is that they wanted to make sure that prosecutions of American troops who are alleged to have done wrong while in the field were handled under American law and in American courts, where their constitutional rights would be respected, rather than elsewhere. When are you going to start the prosecutions?
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Two things,
First, if they are tried, the public will never hear about it, it will be handled internally by the Judge Advocates Corp in a court martial
Second, the date for any such court martial will be set once the veracity and accuracy of any potential charges are checked
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Rajvik Wrote:Two things,
First, if they are tried, the public will never hear about it, it will be handled internally by the Judge Advocates Corp in a court martial
That's a problem in and of itself. Secret trials.
Rajvik Wrote:Second, the date for any such court martial will be set once the veracity and accuracy of any potential charges are checked
And how many decades is that going to take? Justice delayed is justice denied.
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I can't see the CBC article because the website is being blocked by my apartment's ISP for some reason, so I don't know if any specific charges are being listed...
Either way, part of the trouble is that this boils down to a matter of the words of two different people being pit against each other. Such is the case, for example, when a soldier shoots a child.
"They had a gun, they aimed it at me."
"It was not a gun it was a toy!"
"It looked like I gun. I had to take action to protect myself and my men."
And so it goes.
It's not that I don't believe such accusations - there were plenty of wrong-doings, of that I am certain of.
But the trouble is that we're not very well liked in the areas where there has been conflict. And this would be a pandora's box that would declare open season on US Troops everywhere, whether or not they served with honor. Do we really want a witch hunt like this on our hands?
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No names, no specific charges - it would be prejudicial to any possible case to list specifics. And the wording doesn't specifically say "soldiers", either.
Here's the first nine paragraphs of the editorial:
Quote:Shockingly, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, announced this week there is a reasonable case that U.S. agents committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
Specifically, Bensouda cited "torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and rape."
It's fantasy, of course. Not the torture and rape and cruelty (and probably a lot more), but the very notion that American officials who committed or ordered such things might ever find themselves at the ICC dock, answering for their actions.
The U.S., which has enthusiastically supported war crimes prosecutions of foreign leaders it disapproves of, would simply never allow it.
In fact, the American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 empowers the president to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court."
It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what that means. The law has been nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act."
The State Department immediately swatted away Bensouda's finding as "inappropriate." The ICC has no business examining the actions of American officials, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau.
The U.S. voted against setting up the ICC, which has 124 member nations, so it doesn't think the court has any jurisdiction.
Further, said Trudeau, the U.S. has its own highly effective system for prosecuting violations of the laws of war, although she refused to name any recent examples.
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It probably is "soldiers", at least that's my impression from the material there.
Not sure if this is related but... I saw it claimed somewhere -- I'll have to do the research later for the specifics, I have to leave for a family gathering in 15 minutes -- that the then-Department of War did an analysis on the performance of soldiers in the wake of WWII (and the Korean War? I can't recall), and discovered that some very large majority of soldiers froze on the battlefield at one point or another, briefly paralyzed at the thought of actually killing the enemy. Displeased with this, the Department changed their training methods to turn out more soldiers who wouldn't hesitate -- and we started getting things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre]My Lai. I'll try and find links after the holiday, but if I'm remembering correctly I can certainly draw a line between this change in methods and things like this and Abu Ghraib.
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I can't copy the quote off fanfiction.net so I'll post the chapter link below but in summary, the pre chapter notes says goes that it is hard to kill people in real life and the army put effort into making their soldiers see the enemy as not human. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5792734/10 ... al-Reality.
Well their are lots of sci-fi stories (The Narn vs Centauri conflict springs to mind) about what happens when an enemy is viewed as a lesser species.
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Rob, you are assuming that just because it isn't broadcast on the nightly news that no one will know, the thing is that the military, the offender's peers will know. Thats one of the things about being military, its a culture in of itself among the greater culture of its nation. Do you know the outcome of the Abu Gharib court martials? I know you can look them up but do you know the results off the top of your head, probably not, a note neither do I. The reason being is that it does not directly concern us, how about the Bradly Manning court martial or the state of the court martial proceedings against that idiot who we traded 5 taliban leaders for because he intentionally got his ass caught by them. The public doesn't know because the public doesnt want to know, so long as they feel the military is keeping them safe, the sheep dont give a fuck about the sheep dogs. But we take care of our own, one way or another.
As to dehumanizing the enemy, that's nothing new, its something thats been being done since before Sodom and Gamora were destroyed. When you are civilized, or at least view yourself as civilized it is hard to get people to fight to the death unless they truly believe that their lives are on the line, or the lives of their family. To get that belief across you dehumanize the enemy, the problem with that is when you have to treat the prisoners as human beings after capture, or when the soldiers start to view the ethnicity of the enemy as the dehumanizing aspect. Again, (though not to someone on this site) not trying to justify what was done, but when the Mongols came through the old Persian Empire, the area that is now the majority of the Middle East, they killed four out of every five men women and children, they destroyed irrigation, they tore down cities and homes and did not leave one stone standing on another. It was said they Made a desert and called it Peace, thus the quote. They recognized that only one thing ruled the minds of the tribal groups in this area of people and it was fear that their family units would be wiped from the face of the earth. The British learned from this in the post World War One break up of the Ottoman Empire. When a British patrol would be hit by the Muj, or just plain old angry teenagers from the villages that got their hands on a rifle or two and a few rounds of ammo, the redcoats would hunker down and call back to base for air support. The Brits would carpet bomb the nearest village to nothing and then sweep across it with their infantry to round up any survivors. When the tribal leaders got the message, they had instances where they would literally tie their young hot heads down in their homes until the British infantry patrols were out of range to attack. They did this to save their village.
Culturally they do not have the concept that westerners do of individual responsibility, its all about the family and familial responsibility. Thats why Honor Killings are a thing over there, thats why selling a younger sister into virtual slavery is not exactly frowned upon, And it is why we cannot rebuild their nations like we did Germany and Japan, there is no way to remove the jihadist mentality. Its a lost cause, just kick their asses and leave.
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