The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in Ukraine: the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. This is not the only war crime committed by the Kremlin tyrant. Other charges must follow.
Biden has repeatedly emphasized that Putin is a war criminal who must be tried.
actually. But it is strong coffee that comes from the president of the United States, one of the rare countries, along with Russia, China and Israel, that exempts its citizens and soldiers from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Not for Americans and their friends
Americans do not want to submit themselves and their friends to the rules they demand their opponents submit to.
Biden criticized the International Criminal Court for investigating Israel over its disputes with the Palestinians. The Trump administration had issued sanctions, now rescinded, against the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Clinton administration signed the treaty establishing the court in The Hague, but his successor George W. Bush canceled it: he and his accomplices, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, allowed many war crimes to be committed.
Among other things, Bush violated international law when he decided to invade Iraq in 2003 and committed a war crime by allowing the torture of prisoners. Obama did not have the courage to go after Bush and his associates so as not to divide the country.
War crime: slaps on the fingers
If Americans are brought to justice in the United States for war crimes, they will either be acquitted or handed frivolous sentences disproportionate to the brutality of the acts committed. That’s when he just doesn’t forgive them. some examples:
In 2007, mercenaries from Blackwater (the American equivalent of the Russian Wagner Group) opened fire in Baghdad on unarmed civilians, killing 17 people, including two children. Four of those mercenaries, who were convicted, were pardoned and released from prison in 2020 by Trump.
In 1967, the American Tiger Force special unit sowed terror in the Vietnamese highland villages, killing hundreds of civilians for no reason. Eighteen American soldiers were investigated for war crimes. After the White House intervened, none of them were charged. Newspaper code De Toledo won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his series of articles on how the Pentagon covered up these atrocities.
For his administration of the murder of 507 Vietnamese peasants, including women, infants, and the elderly, from the village of My Lai in 1968, Lieutenant William Calley was sentenced to life in prison. He was pardoned and released after two days in prison by fellow outlaw Richard Nixon. The American public overwhelmingly supported mass murderer Cali, who is considered a national hero in a country that nonetheless likes to see himself as the main defender of justice on the planet.
