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Fun fact! In 2002 the US passed a law allowing themselves to invade the Hague in case any high-ranking US officials ended up on trial there.
Which I’m sure they passed in the year between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq just by coincidence, and they weren’t expecting any shady shit to go down at all.
How would that work? Wouldn’t that be an act of
warunprovoked aggression per the UN charter?No no, don’t you know that we don’t do “war” any more? We do “operations” now. War is totally different. Then we have to obey Geneva conventions and all sorts of other hairy stuff. Our politicians have decided as long as we don’t call it “war” then we’re fine.
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Well, you know, the US always considered the international treaties to be more akin to suggestions.
I mean what are they gonna do, send them to the Hague?
Yeah, it would be.
It’s geopolitical dick wagging, not a law that was actually needed or does anything.
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That’s correct. It wasn’t their first attempt, either. Instead Bush opted for the 20 years of occupation for whatever reason.
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The United States today rejected yet another offer by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in a third country if the U.S. presents evidence against bin Laden and stops air attacks.
It’s insane to suggest the US would ever agree to that.
I believe it would have been the correct move, but the US as a nation would straight up never agree to that. The citizenry would have lost their fucking minds.
Officially that was the reason. The violation of the ceasefire. Iraq did not abide by the terms of the ceasefire.
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have invaded. I supported the invasion at the time because of the violations of the ceasefire. I didn’t completely buy the wmd argument.
Looking back, Iraq distracted us from Afghanistan.
Both countries also do not recognize the authority of International Court. High ranking officials definitely should have been hauled off to jail for authorizing, developing, and employing “enhanced interrogation” (aka torture) techniques
Now, why wasn’t Bush charged with any crimes? For the same reason nothing will happen to Putin in Russia.
Trump is being charged with crimes
Trump is being charged by the US and state governments with violation of US and state laws
That’s a far different scenario than an international court attempting to charge and arrest a US president (current or former
Bush lied to congress and the American people. I don’t believe there were no crimes committed by doing that.
But did Bush knowingly lie to a degree provable in court?
He would have had to have known it was a lie and for that to be proven in court. With trump, his crimes were so egregious there were devout party line adherents backing out and explicitly stating just how illegal what they were doing is. Trump had been told multiple times, in multiple ways that what he was doing was illegal and he went for it anyways.
Another point to add. It is not illegal for anyone to lie, so unless he was testifying under oath, Bush could lie as much as he wanted without legal repercussions.
Not quite. The constitution has a cutout for official duties of the office. The president must faithfully carry out the duties of the office. So knowingly lying can fail that test.
If you want someone to blame for the US invasion of Iraq, blame Italy, their Intelligence apparatus, and Nicolò Pollari in particular. He submitted the “Iraq is buying Yellowcake” to the CIA twice, who figured out it was a forgery before setting a private meeting with the vice president who did not know the CIA had already ruled it out.
The Constitution lists one crime: treason. He didn’t do that. Not faithfully carrying out the duties of the office is absolutely grounds for impeachment, but it’s not a crime.
It’s not illegal to not do that. The legal framework to deal with that is impeachment and trial by Congress.
It’s not illegal to lie to the American people. And it’s practically a requirement for office.
Trump didn’t even try and hide his crimes. He thinks being rich means he can do whatever he wants.
Well he’s been at it since the 80s and so far it’s been the only thing he’s ever been mostly right about for an extended period…
So it’s better when they try to hide it?
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Not war crimes though
As criminals should.
We barely got to the point of impeaching Nixon for his bullshit and Reagan got off scott free for Iran-Contra. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Bush didn’t get keelhauled for his bullshit invasions especially since most of the morons in Washington were totally on board with it.
Some of us could see it coming from a mile away with Afghanistan. (Just had to look back to how it went for the USSR and like every other country that tried before us (see “Graveyard of Empires”).
Iraq* looked an awful lot like bullshit driven by greed, oil, and “finishing what daddy started” at the time. Idk about the last one now but the first two? Definitely. But fucking Congress went along with all of it. Probably lobbied by billionaires.
So no way was he going to pay for his crimes.
People at the top in this country rarely do.
Iraq, not Iran, but yes definitely to “finishing what daddy started.” In 2002-2003 the W’s cabinet was chock full of people who got their leashes yanked on the Kuwait/Iraq border because Daddy Bush respected international laws and norms. They were steam rolling toward Baghdad basically unimpeded. They could taste that sweet sweet oil and a major military victory over an aggressor state that would send a strong message about the sovereignty of international borders.
It sure as shit scared the hell out of Saddam, too. Probably that’s why he got all paranoid.
With hindsight and if we assume that the US was going to invade Iraq either way (in 1991 or 2003), it would’ve been better probably to just do it the early 90s, before the was a robust international terror network to step into the void.
Overall, I think it was justified to invade Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 and depose their government, but stop there. I don’t know what the best “after” would’ve been. Definitely not putting all our focus into Iraq. Perhaps with all our resources and world focus on actually rebuilding Afghanistan instead of pivoting to Iraq, we could’ve helped them succeed instead of running from place to place putting out fires while it smoldered.
🤦🏻 yeah Iraq. Autocorrect probably. Daddy Bush probably also wanted to avoid a quagmire. Idk.
I agree we were justified invading Afghanistan and felt so at the time but it’s just not a great place to try and “conquer”. You might be right about the distraction of Iraq. However, Afghanistan strikes me as a country with the kind of deeply entrenched culture and politics so different from anything we are familiar with that I don’t know if we could ever actively transform it in meaningful ways.
The US had no support to set foot in Iraq. The UN mandate was to remove Iraq from Kuwait, no more, no less. If the auS set foot on Iraqi soil, it would be going alone, and in violation of the UN.
So no way was he going to pay for his crimes.
What specific crimes?
I think his and his administration did a lot of awful shit, but they did it using politics, not by breaking the law. They painted their opponents as un-American. They whipped up fervor saying that “you’re with us or you’re with the terrists” and changed the “French Fries” in the congressional cafeteria to “Freedom Fries” after the French refused to jump on board with their war plans. They made sure the public was scared, because scared people are easier to manipulate. But, fundamentally his administration did it so that they could win votes in and for the house and senate. Fundamentally he still followed American law.
There are various things where the administration or the military might have violated international laws against war crimes or aggression. For example, the treatment of the prisoners at Abu Graib, the whole existence of and infinite detention at Guantanamo Bay, and possibly even the invasion of Iraq itself. But, international courts require a much higher burden of proof, especially to pin the crimes on the head of state. And, Bush had pet lawyers like John Yoo producing memos to declare it all legal.
Evil shit, especially evil done by the military in other countries is almost never going to result in criminal charges, let alone convictions. Trump is unusual in that the crimes were so incredibly blatant. The normal method for most shady heads of state is to at least go for plausibly legal. They have access to tons of lawyers willing to bend over backwards to declare what their bosses want to do as being legal.
People need to stop equating “evil shit” with “crimes”. Yes, Bush and his administration was responsible for a lot of evil shit. He was responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, thousands of deaths of soldiers in the bullshit “Coalition of the Willing”. He was responsible for indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay and torture at Abu Graib. But, with all that blood on his hands, he may have done it all without breaking any laws. There’s a reason why the prisoners are being held in Guantanamo Bay and not on US soil. There’s a reason that the torture happened in an Iraqi prison. A big part of that is that many US laws don’t apply to those places, so while it’s awful, it may not be illegal.
Sometimes I wonder if the DRA would’ve succeeded if the CIA and MI6 hadn’t been backing the Mujahideen.
No stupid questions, but certainly stupid answers.
The USA is not a part of the international criminal court. So even if the ICC said the US committed war crimes, they have no way to enfore those laws in the USA.
ICC is for states that can’t prosecute within their country. USA can do that. So it goes like this:
ICC: Hey, USA, you committed war crimes
USA: We dont recognize your court of law, and we did our own investigation where we found no wrongdoing.
ICC: We disagree
USA: Okay, that’s nice. If you arrest Bush we will invade the Hague
Stalemate.
ICC is for states that can’t prosecute within their country.
This is false.
I mean how bout a source buddy?
Heres what they say on their website. “As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts.”
https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/the-court
Perhaps we interpret that differently, or I could have described it better.
You just come in here, take one sentence, call it false, and leave? Come on mannnnn.
I don’t need to refute your entire argument, this isn’t a Swedish university where peer criticism is required.
The ICJ says it’s a lot of things but it’s only been used as a colonial court against countries that aren’t aligned with western interests. I don’t defend the war criminals that have been prosecuted by the ICJ but how does the ICJ recognize the definition of a national court? For example, if an African country has an indigenous form and interpretation of justice to ensure societal cohesion, who are the western Europeans to say that their form of justice is incorrect and they need to be tried at the “international court”.
The court was only created to try Nazis because they didn’t think that country would treat their heros (at the time) fairly. It’s now used to try leaders the west doesn’t like. There’s lots of people in Iraq, Britain that want to see Tony Blair at the ICJ but the ICJ and the UK would use a rule such as the one you’ve mentioned to say it doesn’t apply, but won’t hesitate to take an Iraqi to the court.
You seem to think the laws you espouse as ideals are not inherently written to protect those already in exploitative power.
Literally none of this has any relevance to the above statement that you deemed ‘false’ and is little more than a political rant.
You can be dismissive of the reality of people outside of your bubble, however this is the pragmatic reality in the world. I do enjoy people taking the time to write comments that show their worldview is being shattered.
Source?
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The UN Security Council, as outlined in Article 39 of the UN Charter, has the ability to rule on the legality of the war, but has yet not been asked by any UN member nation to do so. The United States and the United Kingdom have veto power in the Security Council, so action by the Security Council is highly improbable even if the issue were to be raised.
No one cares and even if they did it can be vetoed.
Countries shouldn’t be able to veto things about themselves. That’s stupid.
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The main problem is thinking the UN is supposed to be like this higher authority. That isn’t and never was the intention, because it’s impossible for it to be.
Yep. The UN isn’t the world government. It’s a place for the super powers to air their grievances for the rest of the world to see.
“The United Nations have made their decision, now let them enforce it” would be the response from the US government if you remove the veto power. Nothing would change. Everything the UN does is symbolic.
The UN is diplomatic platform, not a world government.
That’s stupid
Duh, but that’s the point of the council, to ensure they can’t do anything.
Afghanistan should be stricken from the title. There were no pretenses on that one. The US could never just let 9/11 go, and our allies and the rest of the world agreed. Just for the invasion in itself, Bush never would have been charged with any war crimes there. No, not even in a more just international criminal system than the one we have.
Iraq is a different story. The fabrications were obvious, our allies called them out, and then we did it anyway. Iraq had no connection to 9/11 and no WMD program in active development. That was obvious to everyone at the time who wasn’t a senseless warmonger. Almost as bad, it took resources away from Afghanistan, which was the fight that really mattered. Stack on top of all that the fact that we could no longer realpolitik by playing the authoritarian governments of Iran and Iraq off of each other. Iran had no direct counterbalance on its border anymore, which freed resources for them to start a nuclear weapons program. They never could have done that if they had to keep up a conventional military to make sure Saddam Hussein didn’t start another war with them.
The two should be considered separately. Bush ought to be tried as a war criminal for invading Iraq, and for what happened during the long occupation in both countries. But there’s no good reason for trying him for invading Afghanistan.
Turned out Saddam was a meanie after the USA helped make him. Had to slap that idea down lest any future installed dictators try any funny business.
Obama should be tried as well. He continued Bush’s politics and despite knowing that newly establish Iraqi government torture its prisoners he signed a document which allowed to hand over thousands of prisoners to them. It’s all well documented.
And that fucker got peace nobel price. What a joke…
Afghanistan was NOT under false pretenses. The entire world stood besides the US for that. It was Iraq that was false pretenses and much of the world did not support that, and as it went on the ones that did, quickly stopped supporting it.
He should have been. Especially after the photos of Abu Ghraib came out. But it is the U.S. so he payed no penalties.
Those photos being released, along with the revelations about illegal surveillance and surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden really destroyed the myth of what we are as a country.
Many factors play into this.
Lyndon Johnson came right out and told the American people that we needed to fight the Vietnam war to protect our rubber and tungsten interests there. Fighting a resource war is unfortunately not the crime it should be, and never has been.
If the WMD pretenses were false, Bush can and did blame the intelligence community that produced the information. No one there was prosecuted because it’s in their daily routine to say “we believe that inside Iraq / North Korea / etc that something bad XYZ is happening” and being wrong is not a crime.
Generally, no one believed that Saddam Hussein was good for Iraq, the Middle East, or the world. Iraqis were quite thankful for his removal. So even if the WMD thing was phony, there is a sense of “well, at least it all accomplished some good purpose.”
We can point to Bush as the sole responsible party but the reality is that Congress voted to authorize it and 40 nations participated. So responsibility is really pretty diffuse and Bush can say “everyone agreed it was the right thing to do.”
American politics are a shit show and any effort to hold a president accountable is seen as a ploy, and even if it isn’t, it becomes mired in the deep partisanship.
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That was all too early for me to be following any political news.
In a way (just this one way) I’m glad he didn’t.
At the time I was so in brainwashed conservative land. If I saw Bush get in trouble I would have stood by him simply because “Republicans good, Democrats bad”. And it might have affected my waking up to the actuality, and maybe slowed it down to the point where I’d be defending Trump now. If the last guy got in trouble but was Republican and therefore innocent, it’s just happening again, gosh dang those lefties.
That’s literally the depth of thought in that camp. I’ve been there and seen it, I did it myself. They don’t have any higher functioning logic to speak of. They really latch onto the victim mentality, even in their source of news. Since, at the time it got popular, Fox News was really the only right-leaning mainstream "news " network. I remember being told by my mom back then that it was the only one that wasn’t “super liberal”. And I took that at face value for years, not even questioning it. That’s all it takes when you’re that young. And then they’ll defend it to their last breath when they only think like that because they were suggested to once, and they build their whole world on it.
Had to scrape myself out of that thinking. Took me forever. Turns out deprogramming yourself against the thinking taught to you by everyone you’ve ever known and with only tangential knowledge of others you know doing it is difficult. I knew one guy that broke his programming, but didn’t really broadcast it, so I didn’t really catch on to much of it. But later I had a roommate that would talk about it all the time, and could back it up. That really got me thinking, and ended up being like the starter pebble you nudge down the hill that becomes the huge snowball. But that’s probably a story for a different kind of post. Probably a whole other community.
I didn’t really have any exposure to anything outside that world until I was 25 or so, when I met the previously mentioned roommate. I still find pieces of that old thinking and influence in me all the time.
Thanks for coming to my accidental TED talk. Got a ramble going there.
Edit- fixed typos and added the part about FN.
Same
Well, because the U.S. is a police state, with a military stranglehold on the planet, and the invasions were predicated on an event with uh, let’s say, suspicious circumstances, that was engraved into the national psyche as the worst crime of a generation.
Who do you expect would charge, arrest, and try him? Certainly not the United States. Congress passed a very broad authorization for the use of force after 9/11. Multiple US allies also sent personnel under the umbrella of a UN security assistance force, so it’s unlikely the UN would try to do anything regardless of which countries have veto power
US consider the international criminal court as a terrorist organization
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Not true by a long shot. In 2003, a majority of Americans wanted the US to stay out of Iraq if the UN security council did not approve the invasion. A majority of Democrats in congress voted against the authorization of use of force. (and many who voted for it said they were against the invasion).
In short? Facism and Saudi Arabia. America wanted to punish someone, but didn’t want to fuck with the money.
