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[Previous entry: "Fantasy and fabrication"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "This country will self-destruct in five seconds..."] 28 April 2003: "Belgium, the ICC and the neo-conservative worldview"
According this article in the Washington Times (your source for objective journalism, uh-huh), a group of Iraqi citizens has enlisted the services of Jan Fermon, a Belgian lawyer to get General Tommy Franks indicted in a Belgian court for war crimes. This is not dissimilar to a case lodged earlier this year in Belgian courts against the US president Bush père, General Colin Powell and General Norman Schwartzkopf, on the allegation that the three were to blame for the deaths of Iraqi schoolchildren during the 1991 Gulf War. "Belgium could issue international arrest warrants, but I don't think we will get to that point," Mr. Fermon said.Not if Belgium wants to continue being host to NATO headquarters, they won't. In fact, an observation by Colin Powell that maybe NATO HQ should be moved further east was one of the contributing factors behind the revision. Interestingly, the WT article fails to note the change in the law. It might be noted that, similarly, when American neo-conservative commentators (e.g. Charles Krauthammer) talk about the Belgian law, they always bring up the indictment against Ariel Sharon but rarely, if ever, those against Castro and Arafat; presumably, the idea that any European might be interested in justice (however ham-fistedly), rather than simply screwing over Americans or Israelis, is too great an inconvenience in the neo-con worldview to merit acknowledgement. Due to the revision, the Iraqi complainants in this case have timed their move badly, and are probably wasting their time (as opposed to just everyone else's). Nevertheless, according to the WT article [An unnamed "senior" Bush administration official] said the complaint highlights U.S. concerns that laws regarding war crimes and institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) can be used to initiate politically motivated prosecutions against American officials.Evidently, "senior administrations officials" are prescient (maybe that's why they won't reveal their identities; they don't want Mulder & Scully to come looking for 'em). It's become a standard feature of warfare in the 20th century (and into the 21st) that somebody will, with or without good cause, accuse any country that wages war of violating the rules and customs of warfare, and the United States is no exception in that regard. Since any "internal investigation" is invariably dismissed as a whitewash (and given the precedent of My Lai, that's not entirely unjustified in the case of the United States), one would think such a body as an impartial international court would be just the thing. There will always be accusations, there may even be prosecutions, but there's no guarantee there will be convictions; there might be acquittals instead. Imagine next time Chomsky (or someone similar) mouths off about the American armed forces committing war crimes somewhere, Ari Fleischer or his successor could point to the ICC verdict and say "Our personnel were acquitted by an internationally recognised, independent body." I can't think of a better way to put those routine accusations to rest. But as long as the US government resists the possibility of US armed forces personnel so much as being investigated, let alone prosecuted and tried, an awful lot of people are going to (continue to) think that the reason for that is the Americans know that there is not only a good chance, but a good reason that those troops may be found guilty. Hell, sometimes I wonder myself, and it's not like I'm a Chomskyite. In The Economist this week, there is a lengthy article (freely accessible) titled "The shadow men", concerning the the degree of influence the neo-conservatives have (and, equally importantly, do not have) on American foreign policy. At one point the article notes: Neo-cons start with the notion that America faces the challenge of managing a "unipolar world" (a phrase coined by a neo-conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, in 1991). They see the world in terms of good and evil. They think America should be willing to use military power to defeat the forces of chaos. Admittedly, they go on to advocate democratic transformation in the Middle East, a view that is not shared throughout the administration. (This is an extremely radical policy, so not only are neo-cons not 'neo', they are not, in the normal sense of the term, conservative either.) But that apart, their views are not so different from others in the administration.Emphases mine. Frankly, I think the above paragraph is more a description of how the neo-cons like to think of themselves, but in practice their definition of "good" appears to be "Republican," or as applied to non-Americans "willing to unquestioningly and unhesitatingly go along with the Bush administration." Even the latter is provisional, since most of the countries listed as members of the "coalition of the willing" in "Operation Iraqi Freedom," including Britain and Australia, have ratified the Rome Statute. Evidently, even allies willing to put the lives of their own troops on the line can not be fully trusted to Do The Right Thing without American (read: Republican) guidance, let alone if given power over an American citizen. I'd find it easier to take the claims of "moral clarity" more seriously if neo-con commentators did not routinely engage in severely dishonest historical revisionism, the better to vilify those who disagree with them. Neo-cons will routinely accuse "the Europeans" (as if there were such a monolithic entity) of failing to stand up to the Sovs during the Cold War, while conveniently forgetting that the governments of most European NATO member states were markedly less than enthusiastic about "détente" (which came courtesy of the Nixon administration); simultaneously, there will be some chest-beating about how the US has always stood up to the Sovs, détente nothwithstanding. Criticism of western Europe's tardiness in doing more to provide for its own defence alternates with sniping at the attempt to form a common European defence policy (including the launch of EUFOR in Macedonia), and the fact that the one criticism contradicts the other is—equally conveniently—ignored. Personally, I think that America is, on balance, a force for good in the world, but the operative phrase here is "on balance." Sweeping your own country's past failings under the carpet while harping on (often fictitious) failings of those who happen to disagree with you is not "moral clarity"; it's hypocrisy. It is also, of course, essential to maintaining a worldview in which one refuses to see shades of grey. The harsh reality is that in a black and white worldview, no country in this world gets to call itself white�everybody's hands are blemished in some way, be it by sins of omission or commission, or simply�which makes for a very dark picture indeed. So I reject the neo-conservative worldview for more reasons than one; though obviously, being not only a European (which from an American perspective is pretty much synonymous with "left-wing" anyway) but also a former UN staff member, one of my reasons for disliking neo-cons is that the amount of abuse slung at me (as part of the greater whole) is well beyond the point that "go and fuck yourself, dickwad" may be regarded as a measured and reasonable response. The reasons are essentially the same as why I reject the predominant peacenik worldview: both are simplistic ("War/anyone who doesn't hate Clinton is bad..."), short-sighted ("...that's all there is to it..."), blinkered ("...and if you can't see the simple truth of that...") and self-righteous ("...you're obviously morally bankrupt!"). As I've noted in an earlier entry, any first-year political science student will tell you that for power to be legitimate (and thus become authority), it must be harnessed to responsibility. In other words, for a superpower to be anything but a rogue nation writ large, it must be super-responsible. And that involves subjecting yourself to scrutiny on occasion, and not acting like the whole wide world is out to get you (yeah, sure, they all want this Court just so they can use it to screw you over). When you behave like the rest of the world isn't worthy of your trust, why would you expect the rest of the world to trust you? In that regard, the neo-con worldview is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Additional: a reader named Clay writes in to say the "senior administration official" is Richard Boucher, the State Department's spokesman, whom Clay saw on C-SPAN uttering the quote. Thanks, Clay. |
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