The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant against Putin for war crimes in Ukraine: the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. This is not the only war crime the Kremlin tyrant has committed. Other charges should follow.
Biden has repeatedly asserted that Putin is a war criminal who should be tried.
It’s true. But it’s strong coffee coming from the President of the United States, one of the rare countries, with Russia, China and Israel, which exempts its citizens and soldiers from the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Not for Americans and their friends
The Americans do not want themselves and their friends to be subject to the rules to which they demand that their adversaries submit.
Biden criticized the ICC for investigating Israel in its disputes with the Palestinians. The Trump administration had passed sanctions, now rescinded, against the ICC for opening an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Clinton administration signed the treaty creating the court in The Hague, but his successor George W. Bush revoked it: he and his accomplices, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, authorized the commission of numerous war crimes.
Among other things, Bush violated international law when he decided to invade Iraq in 2003 and he committed a war crime by authorizing the torture of prisoners. Obama did not have the courage to pursue Bush and his two accomplices so as not to divide the country.
War crime: slaps on the fingers
If ever Americans are brought to justice in the United States for war crimes, they are acquitted or receive insignificant sentences out of all proportion to the monstrosity of the acts committed. And that’s when they’re not just forgiven. Some examples:
In 2007, mercenaries from the firm Blackwater (the American equivalent of the Russian group Wagner) opened fire in Baghdad on unarmed civilians, killing 17, including two children. Four of these mercenaries, found guilty, were pardoned and released from prison in 2020 by Trump.
In 1967, the American special unit Tiger Force sowed terror in the villages of the Vietnamese highlands, killing hundreds of civilians without cause. Eighteen American soldiers were investigated for war crimes. Following White House intervention, none were ever charged. The newspaper Blade de Toledo won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his series of articles on how the Pentagon covered up these atrocities.
For directing the murder of 507 Vietnamese peasants, including women, babies and old people, 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. American public opinion overwhelmingly supported the mass killer Calley, considered a national hero in a country that nevertheless likes to see itself as the main defender of justice on the planet.