email: tompoe [ at ] fngi dot net
Tuesday, September 15, 2050
Today, Bush's defeat in Iraq remains the single most studied military engagement in American history, and writers still debate whether Bush was a racist murderer; a swaggering, egotistical self-promoter; or a martyred hero betrayed by his subordinates. Historians tend to view him as a president whose vanity, youth, and desire for victory clouded his tactical judgment in the face of his father's warnings.
Actually, the words above were lifted without permission from the university's web site about Custer's battle at Little Big Horn in 1876
University of Hawaii Digital History series
Little Big Bush and the International Criminal Court
"'Our ultimate goal is to conclude [these] agreements with every country in the world, regardless of whether they have signed or ratified the ICC, regardless of whether they intend to in the future,' John Bolton, then-undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, remarked in 2002."
Bolton Quote site
Did Bolton really say that? He was referring, apparently, to bilateral agreements that would prevent any government from referring Americans to the International Criminal Court. I suspect this quote follows efforts by Bush since the day he entered office to get the United Nations to spell out what steps would be needed to remove the U.S. signature from the treaty creating the International Criminal Court. One reference on Bush's foreign policy goals is found at: USA Today article [07/26/2001 - Updated 09:01 PM ET Critics decry Bush stand on treaties By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY ]
What is the International Criminal Court, you ask? From Wikipedia, "The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt)[1] was established in 2002 as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression . . .". Notice that the public was aware of efforts dating to the very first day of Bush's entering office to remove the U.S. from any obligations. They offered reasons, of course. The most publicized reason was based on the logic that if we participated, any country could haul any American before the court for any reason. There doesn't seem to be a response to why we should be worried, as we don't do genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or crimes of aggression . . . do we?
On September 15, 2004, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared the Iraqi invasion/occupation illegal. Ooops. Such a starting point looks pretty dark for Bush, eh? The millions of Iraqis who lost their lives may just qualify as a genocide. We can hold on judgment for the moment.
Crime against humanity as defined under international law is an act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, and is the highest level of criminal offense. Should the fact-finding body (yet to be determined) find the Iraq invasion/occupation illegal, we won't need to look very far to find evidence of crimes against humanity. Hey, depending on how Bush handled the donations from other countries, we may not have to look any further than New Orleans, and the Katrina hurricane atrocities. Say, do you happen to know what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars donated by other countries?
War crimes are pretty well documented, unless Bush can get rid of that pesky label of "illegal" invasion/occupation tragedy. And, I love the category explicitly laid out for crimes of aggression. This charge would take us all the way back to the first days of Bush's administration, when planning for the Iraq invasion/occupation began. I sure hope we find the missing emails, don't you?