Post with absolutely nothing fannish whatsoever

[selenak]

You know, with the evil orange clowns on both sides of the Atlantic competing in incompetence, demagogy and open contempt for anything resembling human decency, it's hard to keep up with the sheer number of outrages, but I haven't seen mentioned in much because due to all the other disgusting things was that 45 put "sanctions" on Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, over her investigation into possible American war crimes in Afghanistan. Just a few days after this happened, which not just the UN thought was an unprecedent outrage and abuse of the whole "sanction" concept - equating a woman investigating war crimes on behalf of an international institution recognized by the majority of countries in the world with a terrorist - , the Atlantic broke the "Trump called soldiers suckers" story. I think it's pretty telling which story caused outrage in the US; this despite the fact that the Orange Menace for all his flag posturing having contempt for veterans and dead soldiers as well as their families is nothing new, just ask the late John McCain, or the Khan family. Because while I doubt that, say, President Romney would have pulled a stunt like this, bashing of the ICC and fuming at the thought of Americans being investigated for war crimes by non Americans is nothing new or indeed limited to the Republican party. The entire Bush II era, with its open endorsement of torture - which is a war crime by any definition given after WWII - was never really dealt with in the US precisely because of this attitude. Obama's stunning euphemism - "We tortured some folks" - was as good as it got. This is why, long before the Orange Menace defiled the White House, no one bough the US argument against the ICC, that if there are US war crimes by the proverbial "few bad apples", the US would deal with it and hence didn't need outside investigation. I mean, sure, it took Trump to nominate torturer Gina Haspels as CIA boss. But the Obama administration through eight years did nothing to prosecute her, either.

Now, even in a best case scenario - Biden wins the election, the fascist toddler currently in the White House leaves without starting a civil war, and the Democrats win the Senate, thereby ending the long slog of Republicans refusing to pass any laws Democrats suggest - , I somehow doubt the whole corrupt and blatantly law breaking clique currently enabling Trump will be prosecuted for all they've done in the last few years. I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love for the lot of them at the very least to be drowned in law suits for the rest of their lives. I fear Biden will do what Obama did; say something about healing and reconciliation and consider he needs the army and the secret services and what Cheetolini has left of the civil service, and that "the country if tired of investigations", so best not, because it won't end with 45's family and his cronies outside the government like Giuliani, it should include a great many officials who saw him break the law and not just were silent about it but encouraged it, profited from it.

And that's why it would actually be helpful to be answerable to an International Criminal Court. But no US President will ever join one.

I've read an article in recent weeks - I can't remember in which magazine - that had the theory that the Nuremberg Trials, which formed our post 1945 ethics in many ways, and importantly by establishing that the laws of an individual country don't supersede the international understanding that genocide and wars of aggression are wrong - i.e. even if your country's laws allow this, you're still committing a crime and are answerable for it - had one significant flaw baked in their premise, and that was that none of the Allies were also under investigation. Now, there were obvious practical reasons - you would never have gotten Stalin to agree, for starters, - and of course the monstrosity of the Third Reich made everything else pale by comparison. But nonetheless: the very trials which were supposed to establish that yes, there were some principles that made for an universal law already also demonstrated that there were exceptions to it. So no investigation of Russian massacres or US camps for Japanese-Americans, or into, say, fire bombings of which very much not a peacenik General Curtis Le May himself said that if the US hadn't been among the victors, they'd have been called a war crime.

Again: I don't want to practice retrospective Whataboutism. I'm completely behind the Nuremberg convictions. But I think if we want to move forward instead of backwards into even more nationalism and vileness than is currently rampant around the globe - and if the US and Great Britain (if there is still a Great Britain at the end of it all) - want to avoid reappearances of the current parasites in charge, then accepting outside investigations into what they've done might be a start.

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

Not to mention the USSR insisted that the prosecution case included blaming the Nazis for crimes that the USSR themselves had committed!

[ratcreature]

I don't see much chance for criminal investigations with persecution gaining acceptance, but for any reconciliation process there needs to be acceptance of investigations that arrive at a shared truth at the very least (obviously it would also help for the atrocities to stop), and possibly reparations for damages to surviving victims, even if there is no punishment of individual perpetrators. You can skip the latter, and don't necessarily need to hand over any officials for their crimes, but the bit about actually accepting that wrongs were committed and that such behavior needs to stop is not optional.

Otherwise there's just no point. If your administration actually wants to continue to do extrajudicial killings via drone attacks that also tolerate a high level of civilian casualties, it's kind of farcical to investigate a previous administration for torturing people. You have to at least make some effort to not continue with the war crimes, before starting with the reconciliation bit.

[sovay]

then accepting outside investigations into what they've done might be a start.

This is much under discussion among the people I know, who have not mentally rehabilitated George W. Bush just because he has begun to speak out against the worse successor that he personally paved the way for. It is maddening.

As far as I can tell, the tradition of reconciliation by sweeping under the carpet goes back to the American Civil War, where Reconstruction produced the simultaneous worst-case scenarios of allowing the South to feel nobly ill-used and resentful and the North to pretend it didn't have to engage with the legacy of slavery because they too were still profiting from it, and look at the fruit that's borne lately.

[sovay]

but the bit about actually accepting that wrongs were committed and that such behavior needs to stop is not optional.

+1. First rule of a real apology. You can't just say you're sorry every time while you keep punching people in the face.

[ratcreature]

The post Civil War situation seems a great example for how reconciliation really can't work when only the victims are willing to reconcile and to do any work. I mean, afaik the formerly enslaved people didn't even demand punishment for their abusers, didn't see any recompense materialize, like that thing with the land and mules that were supposed to be handed out but weren't, yet even so were willing to work together with white Americans in the political institutions. So that looks like an offer to just start over was on the table on their part, but wasn't accepted by the majority of white people. Who then doubled down and shut black Americans violently out of participation really fast, and created a slightly modified system of state supported racist terror again, presumably because there was very little insight among white people that state supported racist terror was wrong, rather than the proper way for society to be organized.

[sylvaine]

Yeah. It's very telling that some countries feel themselves above international law.

[lilacsigil]

Absolutely - and it bothers me tremendously that Australia is trying to do the same thing, not with war crimes (which are being investigated at present with regard to Afghan civilians) but with refugee conventions. And the more the bigger countries like the US hold themselves apart, the more smaller countries like mine think that's just awesome.

[selenak]

What ratcreature says below, i.e. Reconstruction is such an awful precedent and hopefully to be avoided future scenario. (If, you know, there is a future as opposed to a Republican/Trump autocracy.)

Speaking out against your worse successor you're partly responsible for: was reminded of this yesterday since Theresa May spoke out against Boris Johnson and his "international law and treaties are just for suckers" behavior. I mean, clearly speaking out is better than silence or joining in with the propaganda, even for Bush (or May), but it's not the same as acknowledging your part in the mess, and what you, not your worse successor, were responsible for.

[selenak]

One of the many, many, many things signalling how bad Putin has been for his own country as well as others is that after it had taken until the Gorbachev era to acknowledge what actually happened at Katyn, he's now rolled it back again.

[selenak]

Speak of bad role models. Mind you, given Tony Abott's new job, the role modelling clearly goes both ways...

[bell]

A solid yep from this corner :| A nation that refuses international cooperation in investigations is one that (successfully), ie, does not need to be held accountable, will pursue its own selfish interests.