The White House is proficient in pointing fingers at terrorists, war criminals and murderers provided such criminals don’t hold American passports.
President Barack Obama says he backs the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague while he’s made no move to ratify his country’s membership. And when he warns oppressive world leaders not to fall foul of international law else risk ending up in the ICC’s dock he sees no contradiction in terms.
Even worse, when Americans abroad are legitimately arrested, the US government leans heavily on those countries detaining US suspects to get the accused transferred into US custody. There are many examples of US interference in the judicial systems of other nations.
Take the Raymond Davis affair, for instance; this former US soldier and contracted CIA operative was charged with killing two men in Lahore in January 2011. The US claimed that he had diplomatic immunity. Pakistan’s foreign minister replied that as he was not a diplomat he wasn’t entitled. President Obama asked Pakistan not to prosecute him and, lo and behold, following a payout to the victims’ families, who disclosed that they were forced into accepting the deal, Davis was cleared of all charges and allowed home.
More recently, Egypt launched an investigation into unlicensed NGOs accusing some of illegally accepting funds from abroad with which to stir up anti-government unrest. Some 16 American nationals were implicated and barred from leaving the country whereby Congress retaliated by threatening to slash $1.5 billion Egypt receives in annual US aid. Behind the scenes the White House and the State Department were working the phones, resulting in the sudden lifting of the travel ban.
It’s unsurprising that in reaction to both of the above incidents illustrating that Americans are being treated like a protected species, most ordinary Pakistanis and Egyptians were appalled at how easily their governments rolled-over under US pressure. And who can blame them when it appears that there is one law for them and most foreign visitors—and quite another for suspected American lawbreakers.
Worst of all is the way US authorities are handling the massacre of 17 Afghans, including women and nine children in Kandahar. Accounts of this killing-spree are chilling. What kind of person—or persons—could in all conscience go from door to door shooting innocent strangers asleep in bed before piling their corpses into a heap and setting fire to them, whatever the provocation!
Well, if you follow American newspapers and networks you’d be forgiven for believing the highly decorated accused Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was an all-round nice guy. ‘Loved by his friends and neighbors,’ the man was apparently “upset” at having to undergo a fourth tour and lost it when one of his friends had his leg blown off the day before his murderous rampage.
As usual, the Afghan people have been treated to apologies from the US president and the defense minister. But they’ve heard all the sugar-laced words before, each time occupying forces kill civilians ‘by mistake’ or US drones obliterate Afghan villages ‘by mistake’ or copies of the Holy Qur’an are turned into a bonfire ‘by mistake.’ Or trophy hunting soldiers who proudly posed for photographs while urinating on Afghan bodies naturally did not represent American values.
President Hamid Karzai says he’s at the end of his rope and clearly isn’t falling for the US party line. According to the accounts of village elders and victims’ families there were more than one soldier involved, which if true, may explain why Afghan investigators complain of a lack of US cooperation and why Sgt. Bales was spirited out of the country at such speed. One bad apple can be explained away but an entire bad batch like that bestial uniformed bunch in Abu Ghraib not so easily.
Indeed, a team of Afghan lawmakers charged with interviewing witnesses to this willful slaughter has found that up to 20 US soldiers may have taken part in the killings. “We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 17 civilians, most of them women and children, have been killed by two groups,” said one of the investigatory team.
For the US, the fallout has been massively detrimental to its efforts to concoct the illusion of a successful outcome in Afghanistan. Karzai has asked US soldiers to stay out of villages and would like an early troop exit. The Taleban have closed the lid on talks and are using photographs of Bales’ victims on their websites to foment anti-Americanism. And judging by a USA Today/Gallup poll, 50 percent of Americans would like their soldiers to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
The president could have dampened tensions by doing the right thing. Bales allegedly murdered innocent Afghans and should, therefore, be handed to Afghan authorities to face justice. But then again, for President Obama seeking reelection, that would be political suicide. People like Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and the usual Fox News suspects would have a field day coloring Obama as un-American and spinning the killer into an American patriot, an Iraq War hero fretting over his injured buddy, a man who lost it when all he wanted in life was to be of service to humanity.
However, American exceptionalism is just as much the fault of those countries that tacitly support it as US authorities, countries like the UK that signed an extradition treaty with the US in 2003 that is unfairly weighted in America’s favor—and a host of states that undertook not to prosecute US service personnel at the urging of the Bush administration. If America continues to permit its citizens who do wrong to hide behind their passports while indefinitely incarcerating the citizens of other countries without trial it will never regain the global moral authority it once enjoyed.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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US rides roughshod over sovereign state laws
Posted on March 28, 2012 by Linda S. Heard
The White House is proficient in pointing fingers at terrorists, war criminals and murderers provided such criminals don’t hold American passports.
President Barack Obama says he backs the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague while he’s made no move to ratify his country’s membership. And when he warns oppressive world leaders not to fall foul of international law else risk ending up in the ICC’s dock he sees no contradiction in terms.
Even worse, when Americans abroad are legitimately arrested, the US government leans heavily on those countries detaining US suspects to get the accused transferred into US custody. There are many examples of US interference in the judicial systems of other nations.
Take the Raymond Davis affair, for instance; this former US soldier and contracted CIA operative was charged with killing two men in Lahore in January 2011. The US claimed that he had diplomatic immunity. Pakistan’s foreign minister replied that as he was not a diplomat he wasn’t entitled. President Obama asked Pakistan not to prosecute him and, lo and behold, following a payout to the victims’ families, who disclosed that they were forced into accepting the deal, Davis was cleared of all charges and allowed home.
More recently, Egypt launched an investigation into unlicensed NGOs accusing some of illegally accepting funds from abroad with which to stir up anti-government unrest. Some 16 American nationals were implicated and barred from leaving the country whereby Congress retaliated by threatening to slash $1.5 billion Egypt receives in annual US aid. Behind the scenes the White House and the State Department were working the phones, resulting in the sudden lifting of the travel ban.
It’s unsurprising that in reaction to both of the above incidents illustrating that Americans are being treated like a protected species, most ordinary Pakistanis and Egyptians were appalled at how easily their governments rolled-over under US pressure. And who can blame them when it appears that there is one law for them and most foreign visitors—and quite another for suspected American lawbreakers.
Worst of all is the way US authorities are handling the massacre of 17 Afghans, including women and nine children in Kandahar. Accounts of this killing-spree are chilling. What kind of person—or persons—could in all conscience go from door to door shooting innocent strangers asleep in bed before piling their corpses into a heap and setting fire to them, whatever the provocation!
Well, if you follow American newspapers and networks you’d be forgiven for believing the highly decorated accused Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was an all-round nice guy. ‘Loved by his friends and neighbors,’ the man was apparently “upset” at having to undergo a fourth tour and lost it when one of his friends had his leg blown off the day before his murderous rampage.
As usual, the Afghan people have been treated to apologies from the US president and the defense minister. But they’ve heard all the sugar-laced words before, each time occupying forces kill civilians ‘by mistake’ or US drones obliterate Afghan villages ‘by mistake’ or copies of the Holy Qur’an are turned into a bonfire ‘by mistake.’ Or trophy hunting soldiers who proudly posed for photographs while urinating on Afghan bodies naturally did not represent American values.
President Hamid Karzai says he’s at the end of his rope and clearly isn’t falling for the US party line. According to the accounts of village elders and victims’ families there were more than one soldier involved, which if true, may explain why Afghan investigators complain of a lack of US cooperation and why Sgt. Bales was spirited out of the country at such speed. One bad apple can be explained away but an entire bad batch like that bestial uniformed bunch in Abu Ghraib not so easily.
Indeed, a team of Afghan lawmakers charged with interviewing witnesses to this willful slaughter has found that up to 20 US soldiers may have taken part in the killings. “We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 17 civilians, most of them women and children, have been killed by two groups,” said one of the investigatory team.
For the US, the fallout has been massively detrimental to its efforts to concoct the illusion of a successful outcome in Afghanistan. Karzai has asked US soldiers to stay out of villages and would like an early troop exit. The Taleban have closed the lid on talks and are using photographs of Bales’ victims on their websites to foment anti-Americanism. And judging by a USA Today/Gallup poll, 50 percent of Americans would like their soldiers to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
The president could have dampened tensions by doing the right thing. Bales allegedly murdered innocent Afghans and should, therefore, be handed to Afghan authorities to face justice. But then again, for President Obama seeking reelection, that would be political suicide. People like Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and the usual Fox News suspects would have a field day coloring Obama as un-American and spinning the killer into an American patriot, an Iraq War hero fretting over his injured buddy, a man who lost it when all he wanted in life was to be of service to humanity.
However, American exceptionalism is just as much the fault of those countries that tacitly support it as US authorities, countries like the UK that signed an extradition treaty with the US in 2003 that is unfairly weighted in America’s favor—and a host of states that undertook not to prosecute US service personnel at the urging of the Bush administration. If America continues to permit its citizens who do wrong to hide behind their passports while indefinitely incarcerating the citizens of other countries without trial it will never regain the global moral authority it once enjoyed.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.