How can the U.S. accuse Russia of violating international laws?

[Lodestar]

Walk the talk.

---

If you want to make moral or legal pronouncements, or to condemn bad behavior, you have to be a moral, law-abiding person yourself. It is laughable when we see someone like Rush Limbaugh criticizing drug addicts or a corrupt politician like former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) voting for more prisons, more cops, and tougher rules against appeals of sentences.

The same thing applies to nations.

And when it comes to hypocritical nations that make pious criticisms of other countries about the “rule of law” and the sanctity of “international law,” it’s hard to find a better laughing stock than the United States of America.

After invading Iraq illegally in 2003, with no sanction from the UN, and no imminent threat being posed by that country to either the US or to any of Iraq’s neighbors, after years of launching bombing raids, special forces assaults and drone-fired missile launches into countries like Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, and killing hundreds of innocent men, women and children, after illegally capturing and holding, without charge or trial, hundreds of people it accuses of being terrorists and illegal combatants, after torturing thousands of captives, the US now accuses Russia of violating international law by sending troops into Crimea to protect a Russian population threatened by a violently anti-Russian Ukrainian government just installed in a coup.

MORE
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/04/how-can-the-us-accuse-russia-of-violating-international-law/

[Cali_Democrat]

1. If I'm following this logic correctly...

Almost no major country is allowed to accuse people of violating international law.

Almost every major country from the UK to France to Germany to Japan to Russia and China have invaded or engaged in some sort of atrocity against another country at some point in their history.

[JoeyT]

5. It's also about how far in back in history the events occurred.

And how accountable the people involved were for their crimes. To use an extreme example Germany's war criminals (At least the big ones) were put on trial. Ours give book tours and interviews on Fox News. Their war crimes were half a century ago. Ours were less than a decade. It's illegal to be a Nazi in Germany. The party our war criminals hail from is one of our two major parties still.

When I say we don't have any room to talk, it isn't a defense of Russia. Germany is quite unhappy with Putin at the moment. It's more of a "Really? We care about war crimes? When did that happen?" thing. I don't want us to stop criticizing Russia. I want us to prosecute our criminals so we can claim to have some moral high ground without everyone rolling their eyes or laughing.

[stevenleser]

8. You are leaving a lot of stuff out

Many of Germany's war criminals were never caught and never brought to justice. Many of the Soviet Unions criminals were never brought to justice. The Soviet Union imprisoned, tortured and killed millions of its citizens. Was anyone ever brought to justice for that? As a KGB officer, how much did Putin participate in that?

In the US, in 2008, the party that perpetrated the war in Iraq lost re-election. President Obama was against that war. He has no hypocrisy issue dealing with Russia regarding Crimea.

[99Forever]

9. And lots of high ranking USA War Criminals were prosecuted...

... and are serving their sentences for their War Crimes, RIGHT Stevie?

[JoeyT]

19. Nope! No Drama Obama is actively protecting them. n/t

[99Forever]

20. Of course he is.

A fact you'll never hear acknowledged by those such as the poster I replied to.

[JoeyT]

18. I left out that Obama actively protects our war criminals while calling out Russia's war crimes.

I left out the federal government's insistence that protest is nearly a divinely gifted human right...while Occupy was being beaten and pepper sprayed and they didn't lift a finger.

We're hypocritical on EVERY issue when it comes to foreign policy. Most governments are.

[stevenleser]

21. No, he doesn't 'actively protect' our war criminals.

Declined to prosecute is a far cry from "actively protect"

[TheKentuckian]

27. When you are the Executive branch tasked with enforcement of the law that distinction is without

functional difference.

[JoeyT]

30. Refused to prosecute is a far cry from "actively protect", and he's done both.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-obama-quashed-torture-investigation

[G_j]

32. a rose by any other name..

nice try..

[Igel]

6. Nobody would be allowed to accuse another of hardly anything.

The old "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" way of thinking.

It only applies in some cases, though.

[stevenleser]

13. A situation that modern legal systems were designed to do away with.

The only issue is, did the person or country break the law. It doesn't matter who is raising the issue of the lawbreaking.

[Lodestar]

2. There’a an old adage that goes something like this:

“The more guilty one is in the perpetration of a dastardly crime,
the more likely they are to accuse innocent parties of the very
same atrocity.”

There is no better example of this on the various geo-political battlefields dotting Planet Earth than the recent color revolution in the Ukraine. A violent revolution which was directly overseen and coordinated by the US-EU espionage agencies. Their highly calculated and preplanned coup d’état orchestrated in Kiev is as transparent as the audiotape of foul language used by Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State, in her conversation with the US ambassador to the Ukraine.

The various collaborators who participated in the execution of this coup d’état include all the usual suspects – US and UK, EU and NATO, CIA and MI6, US Department of State and Council on Foreign Relations, DIA and NSA. Each of these parties is now working overtime to keep the lid on their covert crimes committed against the Ukrainian people. Were they to be exposed in the sunshine of revealed subterfuge and sabotage, the entire world would check these globalist conspirators with finality.

That is the explicit purpose of this exposé.

No other nations on Earth have gotten away with instigating and engineering so many civil wars and revolutions, coup d’états and and government overthrows as the US-UK juggernaut.

Read more: http://www.storyleak.com/ukraine-deception-useu-directed-coup-detat-exposes/#ixzz304NDZxAN

[nationalize the fed]

3. another take

Why Is the U.S. So Hypocritical in Foreign Policy?
by Ivan Eland, March 19, 2014

In the current crisis over the Russian "invasion" of Crimea (is it an invasion when the population seems to want to be invaded and no violence occurs?), US protests seem rather hypocritical to the world. After all, recently, the United States has attacked or invaded six countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya using ground troops or manned aircraft and Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia using unpiloted drone aircraft dropping bombs. In all of these instances, even if the local government directly or tacitly approved of the US military action, many of the country’s people did not.

A free and fair referendum among the people of Crimea would probably welcome a return of Crimea to Russia. Sixty percent of the Crimean people are Russian-speakers. In contrast, the more violent US invasions or attacks on countries usually have been less well received by much the population of the target nations. But didn’t Russia violate international law by sending troops into a foreign land without doing so in self-defense? Russia makes the lame excuse that it was rescuing Russian-speakers in Crimea from the anti-Russian revolution in Ukraine. And since international law requires that countries take military action only in self defense or when the United Nations Security Council approves such use of force, the answer is that Russia has violated international law...
http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2014/03/18/why-is-the-u-s-so-hypocritical-in-foreign-policy/

The US needs some Washington and Jefferson and the rest of the world needs to call the hypocrisy out.

[Igel]

7. There was violence in Crimea.

It just wasn't reported much because, well, it was hard to find and substantiate. That's what happens when reporters are told how to report. The blatant presaging of discrimination. "No more embarrassments like having a movie at the theatre in Ukrainian." "We'll be democratic, like in Europe--over 50% of the people speak Russian, so everybody has to speak Russian."

As people from the Eurasian Front would say, Russian is the regional language and to try to thwart the use of Russian is fascism.

Look at the sheer numbers.

58% ethnic Russians.
28% Ukrainians.
12% Tatars.

That was in 2001. Tatars immigrated since then.

97% for union with Russia. Now Ukrainian is being squashed, as is Tatar. Tatars are being told that Russians want their apartments. Ukrainian schools are being closed because "nobody wants people like you here."

Most Canadians are English speakers. Perhaps they'd like to return to being formally part of England? And the French-speakers in Canada want to be part of France? Thinking by proxy, not so good. Now, it's completely possible that a majority of Crimeans would have voted to join Russia. But that's like assuming that the people of Baghdad would like having no more Saddam--something that's apparently not true, they, esp. the Shi'ites, loved Saddam. (Or is that another bad assumption?)

[Bluenorthwest]

11. Wow. In a thread discussing 'moral standing to criticize' you speak of

the Russian majority and low Tatar population without mention of the USSR's mass deportation of the Tatars in 1944, at gunpoint packed onto boxcars, about 200,000 of them. Shipped to Central Asia and not allowed to return at all until the 80's, never repatriated nor compensated.
That Russian majority is the result of an ethnic cleansing and intentional settlement to create that majority. It's just the history, it's facts and it makes it pretty creepy to state how few Tatars remain in Crimea, creepier still to note they are still fleeing, and who wouldn't flee?

[stevenleser]

12. That is an extremely important point that should be repeated each time this issue comes up.

The Russians should not be benefiting from the result of ethnic cleansing by their parent state, the USSR.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. It galls me when folks tout the 'Russian majority' as reason to annex

without noting that the majority was created by criminal means. If folks don't feel it was a crime, I would assume they would not leave it out. But when you have folks claiming moral superiority in part on the basis of covering up a crime against humanity it gets to be a tad much for my bookish sensibilities.

[newthinking]

25. History in the region is very complex. Your own analysis is incomplete

Other than expressing bias, Crimea is every bit as "Russian" as it is anything else. It was part of Kyiv Rus well before the Mongol Hoards invaded and then the Tatars became dominant.

Trying to lay "claim" for any group is folly, because one group after another has been historically overthrown and displaced. Unless the world wants to continually fight each other at some point we need to simply accept Democratic rule with whoever is in a location now, and work toward embracing and living beside all cultures.

Anyway, these posts border on bigotry. One wrong does not another make.

[MattSh]

22. And your source is???

[grahamhgreen]

4. They don't care. It's neo-con take over the world imperialism 101.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. This is the height of comedy

Really.

The current bad boys d'jour have lost so much influence it is not even funny anymore.

And we all know other nations are puppets of pretty powerless bad boys. This is hilarious.

[stevenleser]

10. None of what you wrote matters, that's the idea behind laws. An accuser doesnt have to be pristine

If Russia broke international laws, it doesn't matter if anyone or everyone else broke the law in the past, Russia is still accountable.

If person A beats up person X and gets away with it, they still get to press charges if person Y beats them up at some future time. Let's make it even more dramatic. Laura beats up her girlfriend Susan because of a dispute, but doesnt end up prosecuted for it. A few weeks later Larry (a stranger to both women) rapes Laura. By your way of thinking, since Laura was violent in the past, she doesn't get to press charges for a violent act perpetrated by Larry. It doesn't work that way.

Laws and who gets prosecuted for breaking them are not based on who is most holy and pristine. That would put any legal system into complete chaos as anyone who commits a crime, or perhaps makes a mistake, would in effect be declaring open season on themselves for anyone to commit a crime.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. It takes one to know one? n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Trash thread

Won't bother with why this is navel gazing and fantasy writing.

[MattSh]

23. Because that's what the USA does?

[cthulu2016]

24. Wow. What a fresh and original thought.

[TheKentuckian]

26. Hypocritically even if fairly

[SidDithers]

28. Lindorff. LOL...

Fuck Ron Paul.

Sid

[joshcryer]

31. +1

[Throd]

29. Because they are.