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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"stunning perversion of US sanctions, devised to penalize rights abusers and kleptocrats"
Any stunning perversion, of course, comes from Trump and anyone with their nosed stuck firmly up his ass, such as national disgrace Pompeo:
The US has imposed sanctions on senior officials in the International Criminal Court (ICC), including chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
...
The Hague-based ICC is currently investigating whether US forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
...
Balkees Jarrah, senior counsel at the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch, condemned the sanctions as a "shameful new low for US commitments to justice for victims of the worst crimes".
Mr Pompeo's move marked a "stunning perversion of US sanctions, devised to penalize rights abusers and kleptocrats, to target those prosecuting war crimes", she tweeted.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54003527
Targeting court officials is, of course, the worst kind of mob move. Also done by many terrorists.
Coleman
(854 posts)and isn't within their jurisdiction. The ICC cannot do anything to the US or its citizens. So a statement then ignoring them was all that was needed, not sanctions.
malaise
(269,157 posts)Important - pariah status coming up
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,480 posts)They run on criminality without consequences.
Pro abuse,pro crime,pro war crimes,pro sociopath.
Don't expect morality from the republican party.
They have no empathy so,no morality.
struggle4progress
(118,323 posts)Leo Shane III , Meghann Myers , and Carl Prine
November 15, 2019
... Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, convicted of second degree murder in the death of two Afghans, was given a full pardon from president for the crimes. Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who faced murder charges next year for a similar crime, was also given a full pardon for those alleged offenses.
Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher, who earlier this fall was acquitted of a string of alleged war crimes, had his rank restored to Chief Petty Officer by the president ...
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/11/16/trump-grants-clemency-to-troops-in-three-controversial-war-crimes-cases/
struggle4progress
(118,323 posts)A Navy Seal platoon leader controversially cleared of war crimes by Donald Trump was a toxic character who was OK with killing anything that moved, according to fellow Iraq veterans who reported his conduct to military investigators ...
Gallagher was convicted in July of posing with the dead body of a teenage Islamic State captive he had just killed with a hunting knife. He was granted clemency by the president in November in a decision that angered military chiefs ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/eddie-gallagher-trump-navy-seal-iraq
struggle4progress
(118,323 posts)American University International Law Review, Forthcoming
39 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2020
Stuart Ford
University of Illinois at Chicago - UIC John Marshall Law School
Date Written: February 13, 2020
... Commanders have an affirmative obligation to ensure that their subordinates comply with the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) and to punish them when they do not. Commanders who fail in this obligation can be held criminally liable for their subordinates actions. This concept is known as command responsibility.
... President Trump has probably committed at least one war crime. In particular, the pardon of Major Mathew Golsteyn, which occurred prior to his trial, made his punishment impossible. As a result of the pardon, Major Golsteyn can never be prosecuted in the United States for his actions, which include murdering a prisoner. The issuance of the pardon by President Trump was a clear violation of the Presidents duty to punish Golsteyns war crimes. This likely exposes President Trump to criminal liability under the doctrine of command responsibility ...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3537719
Solly Mack
(90,779 posts)struggle4progress
(118,323 posts)By MONA CHAREN
November 27, 2019 1:25 PM
... President Donald Trumps latest assault on Americas moral standing was his decision, over the objections of the military and the pleas of his own defense secretary, to pardon three servicemen convicted of, or charged with, war crimes. We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill! he tweeted. Note that Trump is not arguing that these cases are miscarriages of justice. Hes saying war crimes should not be punished.
Any number of current and former servicemen have bristled at this. We do not train our soldiers to be killing machines and contributing to that stereotype is hardly pro-military. Veterans already face skepticism from potential employers out of misplaced fear that PTSD or some other combat-induced mania will incline them to murderous rampages.
While war does require aggression and violence, the U.S. military abides by (or used to) the Law of Armed Conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As Fred Kaplan noted, American troops are trained as much in when not to shoot their weapons as they are in how to shoot them. Our troops receive intense training in avoiding civilian casualties.
Trumps pardons are a slap in the face to the dozens of Navy SEALs and others who risked their careers to come forward and report gross violations, and to the hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women who behaved honorably on the battlefield. Just as Trump offered a green light to Turkeys strongman Recep Erdogan to slaughter our Kurdish allies, hes provided permission to the American military to commit similar outrages ...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trumps-war-crimes-pardons-weaken-our-militarys-moral-fiber/
struggle4progress
(118,323 posts)BY SETH MOULTON DECEMBER 2, 2019 2:34 PM EST
Seth Moulton represents Massachusetts' 6th District in Congress.
In Iraq, I learned there are two types of courage: physical courage and moral courage. Moral courage was often the hardest to find.
The ability for our service members to summon moral courage when it counts is why most of the world sees America as the good guys. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has pardoned men who have failed to live up to the standards to which we hold our service members. He has pardoned men who have been convicted of posing with enemy corpses, failing to render aid to injured enemy combatants, second-degree murder, attempted murder, wrongfully communicating a threat, reckless endangerment, soliciting a false statement, and obstructing justice. He has interfered in another pending court-martial murder trial.
When our president says the laws of war dont matter, he is sanctioning war crimes. Hes telling the people who fight and kill on your behalf that it is ok to torture our enemies, mutilate their corpses, and kill combatants without due process. Hes saying he knows better than the honorable people who formed the juries that decided these convictions. And he undermines the entire Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the laws that the people who volunteer to serve in the military agree to follow.
Make no mistake, on the battlefield, the U.S. military does not fight fair. We have access to tools that are unavailable to the enemy. We place these tools and technology into the hands of the worlds best-trained warfighters. They use them to outmaneuver, outnumber, overwhelm and kill our opponents on the ground. But when we place these tools into our service members hands, were not just telling them we trust they will accomplish the mission; were telling them we trust them to do it while upholding our nations principles. When the commander in chief says that any single law of war does not matter, what hes really saying is that none do ...
https://time.com/5742464/troops-deserve-better/