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War Criminals Must Be Held Accountable Throughout The World

Razoo

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By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan


“I think he is a war criminal,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This week, also in Mariupol, the Donetsk Regional Theater of Drama was hit.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, were sheltering there. The Russian bombardment of Ukrainian civilians has been wanton and relentless, and has included the use of cluster bombs. Overall deaths among the civilian population are estimated well into the thousands. More than 3 million people have fled the country, with UNICEF estimating that the war has created one child refugee per second.

Shortly after Biden called Putin a war criminal, his administration walked back the statement. State Dept. spokesperson Ned Price and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was “speaking from the heart,” while the official U.S. government process to assess war criminality was ongoing.

There is good reason for Washington officialdom to be circumspect with accusations of war crimes. If a man in the Kremlin can be charged with war crimes for ordering an illegal invasion, what is to stop the same charges from being levied against a man in the White House for doing the same thing?

Former President George W. Bush did just that in 2003. Bush said in a statement on February 24th, “I join the international community in condemning Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.”

Historian Andrew Bacevich knows a thing or two about war. He was a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam. His son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007.

“Not for an instant would I want to minimize the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine today and the deaths and the injuries inflicted on noncombatants,” Bacevich said recently on the Democracy Now! news hour.

“But let’s face it, the numbers are minuscule compared to the number of people that died, were displaced, were injured as a consequence of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…in the vicinity of 900,000 deaths resulted from our invasion.

I understand that Americans don’t want to talk about that, don’t want to remember that, the political establishment wants to move on from that. But there is a moral dimension to the Ukraine war that should cause us to be a little bit humble about pointing fingers at other people.”

Indeed, Biden’s own Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had to edit her March 2nd remarks to the General Assembly. She said, “We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs – which are banned under the Geneva Convention.”

The phrase, “which has no place on the battlefield” was struck from the transcript, reflecting the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. used cluster bombs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and as recently as 2009 in Yemen in an attack that killed 55 people.

If international law is to count for anything, it must be enforced equally. No one, in Russia, the United States or elsewhere, is above the law. The United States should join the civilized world and sign the international treaties on the ICC, cluster munitions, and landmines.

 
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If all war criminals are to be held accountable then Biden will be sitting side by side with Putin in the Hague during their war crimes trials.
 
If all war criminals are to be held accountable then Biden will be sitting side by side with Putin in the Hague during their war crimes trials.
Why don't you document some of Biden's war crimes for us here.
 
Why don't you document some of Biden's war crimes for us here.
Sure thing:

 
Sure thing:

By that definition, every American president for the last 100 years is a war criminal and should be incarcerated. The depths you go to in order to defend Putin's actions are astounding.

The intentional war crimes being committed by Russia as part of their doctrine is in no way comparable to unintentional deaths from drone strikes.
 
By that definition, every American president for the last 100 years is a war criminal and should be incarcerated. The depths you go to in order to defend Putin's actions are astounding.

The intentional war crimes being committed by Russia as part of their doctrine is in no way comparable to unintentional deaths from drone strikes.
Lying again as usual. How have I defended Putin? I want them all tried for war crimes, while you defend drone strikes against innocent civilians, so it means you love murder. Congrats on showing your true colors.
 
Sure thing:


These are not deliberate targeting of civilians. You’re trying too hard.
 
Lying again as usual. How have I defended Putin? I want them all tried for war crimes, while you defend drone strikes against innocent civilians, so it means you love murder. Congrats on showing your true colors.
You're defending Putin by trying to put him in the same category as the last 20 American presidents. The US does not intentionally target civilians like Russia does as part of their core doctrine.

It's like saying Roosevelt should be charged as a war criminal because some civilians died by American hands in WW2.
 
These are not deliberate targeting of civilians. You’re trying too hard.
LOL every drone strike is a deliberate target. You clearly have no idea what youre talking about.

You're defending Putin by trying to put him in the same category as the last 20 American presidents. The US does not intentionally target civilians like Russia does as part of their core doctrine.

It's like saying Roosevelt should be charged as a war criminal because some civilians died by American hands in WW2.
Jesus, your reasons are moronic. So you think drone strikes arent a war crime just because a few people get killed? How many have to die for it to be a war crime in your view?
 
LOL every drone strike is a deliberate target. You clearly have no idea what youre talking about.


Jesus, your reasons are moronic. So you think drone strikes arent a war crime just because a few people get killed? How many have to die for it to be a war crime in your view?
The killing of civilians has to be intentional or intentionally negligent. Russia targets civilians intentionally and on a mass scale as a strategic tactic.

Your comparison of that to US tactics is ridiculous and clearly has the goal of attempting to reduce Russia's guilt by pretending we all do the same.
 
The killing of civilians has to be intentional or intentionally negligent. Russia targets civilians intentionally and on a mass scale as a strategic tactic.

Your comparison of that to US tactics is ridiculous and clearly has the goal of attempting to reduce Russia's guilt by pretending we all do the same.
You clearly dont know how drone strikes work. I thought you served?

Every attack is targeted since an operator manually controls the drone from a remote location.

Now answer the question- how many must be killed in order for you to consider it a war crime?
 
You clearly dont know how drone strikes work. I thought you served?

Every attack is targeted since an operator manually controls the drone from a remote location.

Now answer the question- how many must be killed in order for you to consider it a war crime?
Lol, I don't know how drone strikes work? Every attack is targeted by a drone operator, but none of the US drone operators are intentionally targeting civilians.

A war crime can be one death or it can be a thousand. What matters is the intention. You see no difference at all between targeting civilians intentionally and targeting legitimate military targets but having some unintended civilian collateral damage?

I know you've become extremely anti-America over the past 5 years of Trumpism, but these two things are not even remotely comparable.
 
Good luck with 'war crime' committed by Putin:

"...the most pertinent, detailed and comprehensive protections of international humanitarian law for persons and objects in modern warfare are still not ratified by several states continuously engaged in armed conflicts, namely the United States, Israel, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and others. Accordingly, states retain different codes and values about wartime conduct. Some signatories have routinely violated the Geneva Conventions in a way that either uses the ambiguities of law or political maneuvering to sidestep the laws' formalities and principles."

(See section Geneva Convections)

In addition to war crime, 'crimes against humanity' are seldom processed to the point of putting anyone in jail/prison.

"The term "crimes against humanity" is potentially ambiguous because of the ambiguity of the word "humanity", which can mean humankind (all human beings collectively) or the value of humanness. The history of the term shows that the latter sense is intended."

(See section Term origins):

Throwing around accusation of war crime and crimes against humanity may be accurate in appearance, but a low likelihood of it resulting in bringing anyone to justice. The US even refuses to pass its own anti-lynching bill.
 
LOL every drone strike is a deliberate target. You clearly have no idea what youre talking about.
You're gaslighting. The Afghan strike was a mistake and it was not the only time that's happened. There was absolutely nothing strategic to be gained by deliberately targeting some random Afghan civilians as we were withdrawing. They thought they were targeting a legitimate target. That's happened with drone strikes under all sorts of US administrations, Democrat and Republican- including the Trump administration... actually, ESPECIALLY the Trump administration.


Where was all your outrage back then?

Putin's strikes on civilian targets, on the other hand, ARE very deliberate and strategic- done with the express purpose of destroying the morale of the local population and getting them to submit.

You're trying too hard. It's making you look ridiculous. You may want to go back to looking for Obama's secret birth certificate- because at least you were doing a little better with that.
 
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By that definition, every American president for the last 100 years is a war criminal and should be incarcerated. The depths you go to in order to defend Putin's actions are astounding.

The intentional war crimes being committed by Russia as part of their doctrine is in no way comparable to unintentional deaths from drone strikes.

So “all war criminals” shouldn’t be prosecuted?

Or is doing a little bit of war crimes okay? How many war crimes should a person be allowed to do?
 
You're gaslighting. The Afghan strike was a mistake and it was not the only time that's happened. There was absolutely nothing strategic to be gained by deliberately targeting some random Afghan civilians as we were withdrawing. They thought they were targeting a legitimate target. That's happened with drone strikes under all sorts of US administrations, Democrat and Republican- including the Trump administration... actually, ESPECIALLY the Trump administration.


Where was all your outrage back then?

Putin's strikes on civilian targets, on the other hand, ARE very deliberate and strategic- done with the express purpose of destroying the morale of the local population and getting them to submit.

You're trying too hard. It's making you look ridiculous. You may want to go back to looking for Obama's secret birth certificate- because at least you were doing a little better with that.

So all Russia has to say is “we thought there was one Ukrainian soldier in the theater and that’s who we were targeting” and it becomes okay and no longer a war crime?
 
So all Russia has to say is “we thought there was one Ukrainian soldier in the theater and that’s who we were targeting” and it becomes okay and no longer a war crime?

The motives have to make sense. A drone strike on a civilian target killing a handful of random people, on your way out, makes absolutely no sense- other than as a big mistake. But consistent repeated targeting of things like kindergartens and maternity wards of hospitals while invading a country, however, does make sense as a tactic to break down the population to submit.

One IS a war crime. The other is not.

Come on man, I know you know this. You know you know this. It's obvious to everyone you're just trying too hard to troll, and it makes you look silly and desperate.
 
The motives have to make sense. A drone strike on a civilian target killing a handful of people on your way out makes absolutely no sense other than as a mistake. But repeated targeting of things like kindergartens and maternity wards of hospitals while invading a country, however, does make sense as a tactic to break down the population to submit.

Come on man, I know you know this. You know you know this. It's obvious to everyone you're just trying too hard to troll, and it makes you look silly and desperate.

So it’s okay to kill a bunch of civilians through negligence? Nobody should be prosecuted for them?

The US operators had to know there were children right next to their supposed target. They chose to fire anyways.
 
So it’s okay to kill a bunch of civilians through negligence? Nobody should be prosecuted for them?

The US operators had to know there were children right next to their supposed target. They chose to fire anyways.

Yes there is a difference. Motivation matters. If a doctor has a complication inadvertently while doing some complicated surgical procedure, at best it might be considered negligence or malpractice- and even there it would have to be proven that some other reasonable or skilled doctor in that position could not have done the same. But if a doctor takes their scalpel and deliberately and repeatedly stabs their patient in the neck- well then that's murder. Big difference.
 
By that definition, every American president for the last 100 years is a war criminal and should be incarcerated.

You got that right.
 
Yes there is a difference. Motivation matters. If a doctor has a complication inadvertently while doing some complicated surgical procedure, at best it might be considered negligence or malpractice- and even there it would have to be proven that some other reasonable or skilled doctor in that position could not have done the same. But if a doctor takes their scalpel and deliberately and repeatedly stabs their patient in the neck- well then that's murder. Big difference.

The operators of the drone were motivated to kill a bunch of children because they thought it would be “worth it” if they also killed another guy.

In what world is that not a war crime? How many innocent people is it okay to murder in order to kill a guilty person?
 
I understand that Americans don’t want to talk about that, don’t want to remember that, the political establishment wants to move on from that. But there is a moral dimension to the Ukraine war that should cause us to be a little bit humble about pointing fingers at other people.”

Indeed, Biden’s own Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had to edit her March 2nd remarks to the General Assembly. She said, “We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs – which are banned under the Geneva Convention.”

The phrase, “which has no place on the battlefield” was struck from the transcript, reflecting the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. used cluster bombs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and as recently as 2009 in Yemen in an attack that killed 55 people.

If international law is to count for anything, it must be enforced equally. No one, in Russia, the United States or elsewhere, is above the law. The United States should join the civilized world and sign the international treaties on the ICC, cluster munitions, and landmines.


If you were to press the "toggle BB code" icon (square brackets, top right side of the comment/editing box menu), you could see where the 'strike text' function was and delete it. I know you can't edit it now; this is for future reference.
 
The operators of the drone were motivated to kill a bunch of children because they thought it would be “worth it” if they also killed another guy.

In what world is that not a war crime? How many innocent people is it okay to murder in order to kill a guilty person?

Law enforcement sometimes deals with such scenarios during hostage situations as well. Sometimes they make the wrong call. These are, admittedly, very difficult situations to be sure.

But are you really saying you don't see the difference between such difficult calls and a deliberate and systematic campaign of civilian slaughter for intimidation purposes?
 
Law enforcement sometimes deals with such scenarios during hostage situations as well. Sometimes they make the wrong call. These are, admittedly, very difficult situations to be sure.

But are you really saying you don't see the difference between such difficult calls and a deliberate and systematic campaign of civilian slaughter for intimidation purposes?

It’s a distinction without difference for the corpses of innocent civilians it leaves behind.
 
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