Is Clinton a war criminal?

[Rex_Goodheart]

Under what UN authority did we bomb Kosovo?

[saltpoint]

1. No.

[datasuspect]

2. definately yes!!!!111

he is satan too.

and he was adolf hitler's cousin.

jeez.

do they have a smiley that expresses someone smacking themselves in the forehead to express consternation?

NB: word misspelled in subject header is intentional

[annabanana]

21. smiley 4U

[datasuspect]

23. YAY!!!

that is neat-o!

[qazplm]

3. oh goodness

some of these definitions are being tortured beyond all reason.

At the rate some people define "war criminal" these days, half the planet is a war criminal.

[rodeodance]

10. agreed.

[Richard Steele]

4. Step AWAY from the Koolaid!

[Rosemary2205]

5. Clenis did it so it MUST be a CRIME

Yeah, "war criminal", "terrorist", "nazi", "fascist" have all sure been taking a beating lately.

[Dinger]

6. No

[WinkyDink]

7. Well, if Bill IS, would you then concede that so is Bush?

Typical Repugnant argument: Bush is innocent, and anyway, Clinton did it, too, but HE is guilty!

[Bridget Burke]

8. No. n/t

[rfranklin]

9. Could be, but there is no question about Bush...

and his puppetmasters--they are war criminals and should be brought before the bar just as the Germans were at Nuremburg.

[Vinnie From Indy]

11. LOL!

Gee Rex, can you get anymore obvious?

[jobycom]

18. To be fair

I've heard a lot of liberals argue the Clinton is a war criminal. I once helped organize a lecture on US foreign policy, and the guys we got to speak, academic experts on the foreign policy in the Middle East, called Clinton a war criminal, as well as Carter, and JFK. One or the speakers said the last nine presidents we had were war criminals who deserved to be hung by the neck until dead. It wasn't what my Democratic club wanted to hear, but these guys were definitely liberal. I can respect that opinion, as long as it acknowledges the far greater crime of the Republicans who slaughtered many times the number as Clinton and under far less pretext. But without further explanation in the OP, I wonder about his motivations, too.

[Recursion]

12. UNSCR 1244, I believe nt

[gatorboy]

13. You could've at least pretended to ask for a school project,

or something. :eyes:

[zanne]

14. Rex--Come back here and fight your battle!

So, Rex_Goodheart decides to post a very controversial question, then we don't hear from him again. Please don't be a coward, Rex. Come back here and fight the battle you started.

[Rex_Goodheart]

19. I don't consider Clinton a war criminal...

I'm just asking the question.

If Bush committed crimes against humanity, as per Mr. Benjamin Ferencz, by launching a war without Security Council approval, wouldn't that apply to Mr. Clinton as well?

For the record, I ADORE Bill Clinton.

[zanne]

22. Can't trust you yet, Rex.

That question is a right-wing tactic. The question itself and the "hit and run" are both repug-inspired.

[Rex_Goodheart]

24. I posed a rational question.

[Dinger]

15. Ye Know Not What Ye Have Started

[jobycom]

16. Clinton intervened to halt an active program of genocide and ethnic

cleansing. He was authorized by a series of agreements all sides in the former Yugoslavia had worked out in advance to gaurantee negotiations. Serbia broke the agreements, and began an agressive ethnic cleansing program that they hoped would be over before the US could stop them. Clinton targeted military and economic targets to cripple Serbia's ability to continue the ethnic cleansing (which included mass killings as well as threats and intimidation to force Kosavars to flee their lands). By Serbia's own inflated estimate of casualties, 3,000 people died before it ended.

I opposed Clinton's bombing, anyway. But by the end of it, I believed I was wrong.

There are liberals who condemn what Clinton did. I can sympathize with that, I felt the same way at the start of it. But it's different in essence and outcome than anything Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not a war crime, and wouldn't be ruled as one because of the diplomatic agreements and treaties reached beforehand (signed even by Serbia), and because of the active slaughter started by Serbia before Clinton attacked. It was a bad situation with no pleasant solution, and Clinton's actions seem to have prevented worse slaughter than they caused.

Edited to correct error.

[rman]

20. No to mention US/western support for the genocide in East-Timor

Death of a Nation - The Timor Conspiracy (documentary)
by John Pilger
http://www.johnpilger.com
http://www.chomskytorrents.org/TorrentDetails.php?TorrentID=139
John Pilger analyzes the Indonesian invasion of 1975, exposing the genocide and Western complicity leading up to the vote of independence in 1999.
A power struggle between political parties within East Timor erupted into civil war in the summer of 1975.
In 1998, John Pilger and David Munro entered East Timor where 23 years earlier, a team of journalists, including Australian Greg Shackleton, were murdered by the Indonesian army for daring to question the validity of the invasion.

[rman]

17. Under what authority did NATO bomb civilian targets in Yugoslavia?

CounterPunch's Coverage of the War Against Serbia
http://www.counterpunch.org/serbia.html

[Minstrel Boy]

25. Well, he authorized the bombing of Sudan's El Shifa pharmaceutical plant

which produced 50% of the nation's medicines and 90% of its most critical drugs. He called it an "imminent threat" to US security.

From CNN, August 1998:

"Let our actions today send this message loud and clear -- there are no expendable American targets," U.S. President Clinton said in a televised address to the American people Thursday evening. "There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values." ... In the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory -- which U.S. officials say also has ties to bin Laden and produces chemicals that can be used to make deadly VX nerve gas -- was heavily damaged.


From The Boston Globe, August 1999:

Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the US Tomahawk cruise missile attack on the $100 million El-Shifa Pharmaceuticals factory in North Khartoum, Sudan. While the attack killed or injured several people, the loss of the factory has had longer-term consequences for the people of Sudan. Without the lifesaving medicine it produced, Sudan's death toll from the bombing has continued, quietly, to rise.

...

But now, a year later, there is not a shred of evidence suggesting that the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan produced nerve gas.

After months of waiting, with little fanfare the US government indirectly vindicated Salah Idris, the owner of the factory, and the Republic of the Sudan. While the government didn't admit its guilt or confess its blunder, last May 4 it did remove the freeze it had placed on Idris's assets. (Had the United States not done so, it would have been forced to reply to the factory owner's lawsuits to lift the freeze.)

While this retreat suggests the United States had no evidence to support its claim that the missile attack was to combat terrorism, it brought to light a whole new spectrum of meaning to the phrase ''crimes against humanity.''


From Frontline, Oct 2005:

In the third week of September, Sudan renewed its call to the U.N. Security Council to punish the country responsible for the attack on El Shifa. "The attack has damaged the development efforts of my country and deprived my people of basic medicines," former Sudanese Foreign Minister Mostafa Osman Ismail told the U.N. world summit in mid-September. "Today, from this rostrum, we reiterate our call to the United Nations to take the necessary and just measures within the framework of international law as a whole to support this just and legitimate demand," he said.


Clinton, a war criminal? Yes, he is. But American presidents and their wars are never bound by law, so what difference does it make?

[jbonkowski]

26. Yes, most US Presidents technically are war criminals

They all do something that puts them in the category of war criminal under international law. America is heavy-handed in its foreign policy, regardless of politics.

As an example, President Carter tried to rescue the hostages in Iran with a helicopter disguised as a Red Cross vehicle. Technically, that's a war crime.

It is a simple fact of life that all Presidents "get their hands dirty", at least internationally. This makes it harder to accuse President Bush of war crimes, as no previous President has paid any price for violations of international law.

You have to be prepared to acknowledge President Clinton's (and many others) violations of international law if you want to make serious arguments about trying President Bush for war crimes. I suppose you can bring up a fairly positive outcome and relatively little loss of life in the Balkans as mitigating factors for President Clinton, but you need to be intellectually honest and admit even he ignored the law. Admitting it doesn't absolve Bush of anything. There is no "He did it too!" defense, as much as the talking heads would like there to be.

President Bush has obviously taken things to a much higher level, and it can be argued he has crossed a line that others haven't, warranting prosecution.

jim