How To Get Away With Murder
To get away with murder in a war zone you have to have a few things going for you. For example…
1) No international body has the power to independently investigate allegations of war crimes, nor prosecute those found guilty under international law.
2) The authorities in the nation in which such crimes are committed have no legal authority to prosecute those responsible, even if an investigation determines culpability.
3) Only the internal judicial infrastructure of the body to which the accused belongs possesses the right to prosecute based on their findings alone.
That is how just powers get away with murder – by ensuring that when it comes to the possibility of negative attention due to criminality they retain the right to investigate themselves to ensure satisfactory outcomes, or at least those that placate domestic despondency, as domestic perceptions far outweigh other considerations. Winning hearts and minds in Iraq is by no means as important as, for example, punishing a few ‘bad apples’ involved at the lowest level of the Abu Ghraib scandal to placate the American public’s superior sense of morality. Even with a 30% approval rating, a democracy can continue to justify a military action simply because the buffer created by that 30% often means that the silent majority of the remaining 70% never really voice their dissatisfaction. That’s precisely how unpopular, costly, and wholly ludicrous wars endure in the face of seemingly overwhelming domestic disapproval. Added to that is the bizarre inability of so many to be able to grasp the difference between policy and support for those sent to enact it – who are always overwhelmingly represented by the nation’s poorest. Once upper middle class kids start coming home in metal boxes the acceleration of dissent becomes glaringly apparent, a phenomenon that was sadly crucial in helping turn public support against US involvement in Vietnam.
Some months ago I was emailed and provided a link to a story regarding the Haditha massacre. The email went on to ask if, given the contents of that story - which was that some of those involved that day had been cleared of wrong doing - would I be writing a retraction given my initial response to the event. My answer to that question remains the same. Until those Marines are tried in an Iraqi court of law, which was good enough for Saddam Hussein and his henchmen in the eyes of the American people and the current administration, or tried by the ICC, then no, I will not write a retraction. Because when wolves are allowed to investigate other wolves there is no security in the rule of law. Especially when the eyewitness reports of Iraqi civilians are treated as dubious or bias, once again reinforcing an engrained sense of Western moral superiority.
In truth, we will never know the full extent of US and British transgressions in Iraq. That reality was preordained prior to the invasion, a precedent that ensured that the Western public would only ever be presented with a one sided reality.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
4) The killer must have a large machine behind him/her. A machine with a voice loud enough to drown out any other voice. A machine that has devalued human life to a point lower than that of a common gopher that gets run over in the night on a back road. That way the soldier acting on behalf of the machine sees killing people as no more than swerving on that dark road to squash a rodent while flinging a beer can out the window.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I hope Blackwater’s Nassour Square Massacre would get some media attention as well. A tyrant was replaced with tyranny in Iraq.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Exactly. Who Cops the Cops?
March 28th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I don’t think it’s quite fair to say that the American public thought the trial of Saddam Hussein was good enough. It was widely seen as a lynching and the general vibeI got from the media who covered it was “that shit is fucked up right there.” But as injustices go in this whole war, it’s a drop in the bucket.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
I have no sympathy for said lynching. I hope it hurt, and he suffered unimaginably. My compassion stops with mass-murderers, id say his previous 20 years was the fucked up part, and contained untold millions more injustices than his farce of a trial. However that is the objection to my rule, which, on the most part finds me a compassionate human being. I dont feel bad for feeling the way I do in regard to his demise, just for the moral collapse of how it got there.
March 28th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
The only methods of solving problems of conflicting ideas of jurisdiction simply aren’t possible in the way the current international community is structured. There are, unfortunately, about as many rational arguments against allowing foreign countries to prosecute suspects from occupying forces for crimes committed on their soil as there are reasonable ones that support the idea. I’m not saying it’s right in the least, but either way, the process is open to abuse by all participants.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Reminds me of the middle ages for cryin out loud. So many atrocities and not enough people with power to fight them. As they say, power corrupt’s absolute.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Only killers call killing progress, right?
March 29th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I agree that international courts can be troublesome, but some universal principle must apply in cases such as this. As for Hussein, he too should have been tried at the ICC. And from the media that I saw, no one was condemning the process.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Yeah, nobody seemed too upset about the process until it was too late, even though there were plenty of signs that it was a bit of a kangaroo court. It wasn’t until witnesses described the scene at the actual execution that I heard anyone describe it as a lynching. Also, there seemed to be a lot of hype and crowing when they captured Saddam Hussein, but his actual execution didn’t seemed to be anticlimatic for the press.