Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t

Hypocrisy and Farce at the International Criminal Court

<blockquote>

A kid in his late teens who trained guard dogs, no doubt because he was
obliged to do so, towards the end of WW2, now 85 was deported from the
US accused of being war criminal as a result of training the guard
dogs, while the US and the Coalition of the Willing is in the process
of committing illegal acts of war, murder and ethnic cleansing in Iraq
and Afghanistan while ignoring similar atrocities being committed in
Zimbabwe and other places around the world, all in your name, it your a
silent citizen of the Coalition of the Willing.

You will NOTE that the former prosecutor and UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights Lousie Arbour oversaw the period when atrocies were to
have been taken place

</blockquote>

Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t
By Paul Craig Roberts

16/07/08
"ICH" -- - National Public Radio has been spending much news time on
Darfur in Western Sudan where a great deal of human suffering and death
are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by
climate change, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought
is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other
claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial as well. The
entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other
than bullets.

Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor
wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for
crimes against humanity and war crimes.

I have no sympathy for
people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the
International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war
criminals? Why al-Bashir?

Is it because Sudan is a powerless
state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name
George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?

Bush and Blair’s
crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf, at least in the
number of deaths and displaced persons, the terrible situation in
Darfur. The highest estimate of Darfur casualties is 400,000, one-third
the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s invasion.
Moreover, the conflict in the Sudan is an internal one, whereas Bush
illegally invaded two foreign countries, war crimes under the Nuremberg
Standard. Bush’s war crimes were enabled by the political leaders of
the UK, Spain, Canada, and Australia. The leaders of every member of
the “coalition of the willing to commit war crimes” are candidates for
the dock.

But of course the Great Moral West does not commit war
crimes. War crimes are charges fobbed off on people demonized by the
Western media, such as the Serbian Milosovic and the Sudanese al-Bashir.

Every
week the Israeli government evicts Palestinians from their homes,
steals their land, and kills Palestinian women and children. These
crimes against humanity have been going on for decades. Except for a
few Israeli human rights organizations, no one complains about it.
Palestinians are defined as “terrorists,” and “terrorists” can be
treated inhumanely without complaint.

Iraqis and Afghans suffer
the same fate. Iraqis who resist US occupation of their country are
“terrorists.” Taliban is a demonized name. Every Afghan killed--even
those attending wedding parties--is claimed to be Taliban by the US
military. Iraqis and Afghans can be murdered at will by American and
NATO troops without anyone raising human rights issues.

The
International Criminal Court is a bureaucracy. It has a budget, and it
needs to do something to justify its budget. Lacking teeth and courage,
it goes after the petty war criminals and leaves the big ones alone.

Don’t
get me wrong. I’m for holding all governments accountable for their
criminal actions. It is the hypocrisy to which I object. The West gives
itself and Israel a pass while damning everyone else. Even human rights
groups fall into the trap. Rights activists don’t see the buffoonery in
their complaint that President Bush, who has violated more human rights
than any person alive, is letting China off the hook for human rights
abuses by attending the Olympics hosted by China.

President Bush
claims that the enormous destruction and death he has brought to Iraq
and Afghanistan are necessary in order for Americans to be safe. If we
are accepting excuses this feeble, Milosovic passed muster with his
excuse that as the head of state he was obliged to try to preserve the
state’s territorial integrity. Is al-Bashir supposed to accept
secession in the Sudan, something that Lincoln would not accept from
the Confederacy? How long would al-Bashir last if he partitioned Sudan?

Last
October the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a photo on its front page
above the fold of an elderly man with mikes shoved in his face. Paul
Henss, 85 years old, is being deported from the US, where he has lived
for 53 years, because Eli Rosenbaum, director the the US State
Department’s Nazi-hunting bureaucracy, declared him a war criminal for
training guard dogs used at German concentration camps. Henss was 22
years old when World War II ended.

A kid who trained guard dogs
is being deported as a war criminal, but the head of state who launched
two wars of naked aggression, resulting in the deaths of more than 1.2
million people, and who has the entire world on edge awaiting his third
war of aggression, this time against Iran, is received respectfully by
foreign governments. Corporations and trade associations will pay him
$100,000 per speech when he leaves office. He will make millions of
dollars more from memoirs written by a ghostwriter.

Does no one see the paradox of deporting Henss while leaving the war criminal in the White House?

Dr.
Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during
the Reagan Administration, is a former associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal and coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.