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gengwyn | 1 year ago
- What crimes and under whose jurisdiction are Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and George Bush guilty of? Osama bin Laden was indicted by a US grand jury under US jurisdiction and refused for extradition by the Taliban, not to mention his Interpol arrest warrant from Libya.
You also linked the Wikipedia page for the Hague Invasion Act but didn’t bring up this paragraph from the Abu Ghraib one:
> In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.
Let’s not act like the United States not being party to the Rome Statute means that US soldiers can commit crimes with impunity and not be punished under policy like the UCMJ.
vidarh|1 year ago
ignoramous|1 year ago
Many US citizens killed by state actors abroad, including by allies. Nothing of note happens. The key here is you think it is unreasonable for US war criminals to be tried at all (even when they commit atrocities in countries party to the Rome Statue).
DyslexicAtheist|1 year ago
The people I've mentioned are guilty of acting on made up fake intel (Iraq has WMD's). They ought to face the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
Also in Abu Ghraib low ranking soldiers got convicted when the entire chain of command's been guilty of these crimes. It wasn't a one off.
The US always has and always will continue to commit war crimes because they never had to reckon with their imperial past. And chickens are gonna come home to roost because no other country has been subject to propaganda by its own government while also to that of other countries (Russia/China) as the US. And having such a large number of people simply being illiterate isn't helping.
The reason Trump came to power isn't just because Russia made that happen (also Russia winning the infowar and enabling Trump is the biggest successful Information Operation and achievement of soft-power in the last 4000 years).
I might change my mind if the US is able to do a peaceful handover of power (without an insurrection) next time this is due. And also provided that they do manage to treat the homeless as human beings. Until then this country remains a failed experiment whose population lacks manners, history, culture, cuisine or basic decency. And every soldier (no matter from what poor background they stem) are an embodiment of that failure.
I guess this sounds like Anti-Americanism. But actually I think the US model is the most promising system we have in something that claims it's the free world. I'm just allergic to all forms of nationalistic boot-licking. And I also believe that the only way to make a system stronger is when it's being critcized. Being addicted to applause and praise for imperial achievements of your own country is for the simps who have never lived abroad, and/or for nationalist bootlickers (the US is full of both).