{"id":232160,"date":"2023-03-27T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=232160"},"modified":"2023-03-23T06:17:55","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T06:17:55","slug":"the-fabulist-arrogance-of-us-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/03\/the-fabulist-arrogance-of-us-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fabulist Arrogance of US Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. reserves for itself the right to commit crimes all over the world. Yet it also refuses to participate in any war crimes prosecution and even passed a law giving itself the right to invade the International Criminal Court at the Hague should a North American or an ally face justice.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

22 Mar 2023 – <\/em>Anyone who feels compelled to acknowledge the full horror of the Iraq War can visit the \u201cBirth defects in Fallujah <\/a>\u201d Facebook page to see photos of the unspeakably cruel deformities the US imposed on the most innocent\u2014the unborn\u2014with the Iraq War.\u00a0 In the documentary film \u201cFallujah: A Lost Generation <\/a>,\u201d a doctor reports that one in five children in Fallujah General Hospital is born with deformities, and urges women in the region not to have children.<\/p>\n

But of course this isn\u2019t new. Vietnam and Korea still suffer birth defects consequent to the US saturating both nations with napalm and Agent Orange. Children in these two countries still suffer grave injury and even die after stepping on unexploded ordnance left behind during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. A famously and horrifically deformed pair of conjoined\u00a0Vietnamese twins were named \u201cNorth\u201d and \u201cSouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Iraq, this isn\u2019t only the consequence of the war that began with the US attack on March 23, 2003. As Kali Rubaii wrote in the Middle East Research and Information Project <\/a>, these horrifying birth defects and high rates of cancer are the result of \u201cdecades of war, bombing campaigns, burn pits, sanctions and other military interventions that not only shatter the public infrastructures necessary for health and well being, but also trigger cascades of environmental degradation.\u201d<\/p>\n

How then can the US possibly claim any moral authority anywhere in the world in any context? But of course it does, every single day, in one sick joke after another.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s most prominent was the International Criminal Court indictment of Vladimir Putin for allegedly forcibly displacing Ukrainians and even stealing Ukrainian babies. Babies? The US and its stenographic corporate press has no moral authority to talk about this without making massive reparations for the irreparable crimes committed against the unborn in Iraq, Southeast Asia, Yugoslavia, and no doubt Syria in time.<\/p>\n

The stealing-Ukrainian-babies story echoed Nariyah, who, after being coached by Amnesty International, told Congress that Iraqi troops were ripping babies out of their incubators, throwing them on the floor, then stealing the incubators. It eventually came out that she was the Kuwaiti Ambassador\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

Whether there is any real crime identified in the Putin indictment or not, this US-controlled court should never be taken seriously. No \u201cinternational court\u201d that has not indicted a single US official or officer for the crime of the century\u2014the Iraq War\u2014should be. And the US, for obvious reasons, The US isn\u2019t even signatory to the Rome Statute that created the court, for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n

In another sick pretense to moral authority, on the heels of the Putin indictment, Antony Blinken made a speech and the State Department issued a press release announcing that it had investigated crimes committed during the two-year Ethiopian civil war and \u201cdetermined\u201d that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), the Eritrean Defense Force (EDF), Amhara forces, and the Tigray Peoples\u2019 Liberation Front are all guilty of war crimes;<\/li>\n
  2. the ENDF, EDF, and Amhara forces are all guilty of crimes against humanity; and<\/li>\n
  3. Amhara forces are guilty of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing in \u201cWestern Tigray.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In other words, Tigrayans are the \u201cworthy victims,\u201d as defined by Chomsky and Herman in \u201cManufacturing Consent,\u201d guilty of only the most relatively minor crimes, while all the other parties to the war\u2014whom the US has condemned all along\u2014are the \u201cunworthy victims,\u201d and the \u201cunworthy victims,\u201d like Russia and, most of all, Vladimir Putin have to be punished.<\/p>\n

    The State Department press release also said that, \u201cThe United States will partner with Ethiopia as it implements a credible transitional justice process for the benefit of all victims and affected communities. We will stand with Ethiopia as it honestly faces the abuses in its past, provides accountability for the harms committed against its citizens, and moves toward a future of lasting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The obvious implication is that the US will somehow take action against Ethiopia if its investigation does not lead to the same conclusions that the State Department has come to. More unilateral sanctions against Ethiopia and Eritrea would no doubt be the first aggressive response, although Eritrea could hardly be sanctioned any more punitively than it already is, given that it\u2019s already one of the four nations\u2014Eritrea, Russia, Iran, and North Korea\u2014that are excluded from using the SWIFT system for executing financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide.<\/p>\n

    The most aggressive trajectory of this arrogance would be indictments of Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki at the US\/International Criminal Court.\u00a0 Of course, the US potential for military violence should never be underestimated, but it seems unlikely in Ethiopia now that the war is over and the US proxy, the TPLF, has been defeated.<\/p>\n

    The Hague Invasion Act<\/strong><\/p>\n

    US arrogance is writ large all over the world, including in the perhaps little known Hague Invasion Act <\/a> passed by Congress and signed by George W. Bush in 2002, roughly seven months before the US attacked Iraq.<\/p>\n

    Formally known as the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, this choice bit of legislation makes it lawful\u2014not internationally, but lawful according to US statute\u2014for the US to invade the Netherlands to save any US official, service member, or citizen, or those of any of its allies, should they ever be brought before the International Criminal Court, no matter how heinous or well-documented the crime.<\/p>\n

    This is US arrogance taken into a fabulist realm, but why should we be surprised?\u00a0Last December it was\u00a0announced <\/a>\u00a0that the US Navy\u2019s next amphibious assault ship LHA-9 will be the USS Fallujah.<\/p>\n

    International law is a laudable ideal now seeming less out of reach as a multipolar world manifests\u00a0on the UN Security Council and in the General Assembly, but international criminal justice will not approach justice so long as its implementation remains in the hands of the most violent, destructive and arrogant empire of all time.<\/p>\n

    _______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> <\/em>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison<\/em>, ann@kpfa.org,<\/em><\/a> ann@anngarrison.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    22 Mar 2023 – The U.S. reserves for itself the right to commit crimes all over the world. Yet it also refuses to participate in any war crimes prosecution and even passed a law giving itself the right to invade the International Criminal Court at the Hague should a North American or an ally face justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[867,70],"class_list":["post-232160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-anglo-america","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232162,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232160\/revisions\/232162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}