There is good reason for the United States to try to immunize itself from the International Criminal Court. Repeatedly, formally and informally, covertly and overtly, the United States has engaged in military and intervention activities which are well beyond the grey zone of international law. We are led to believe that this is all part of American “exceptionalism”, but the reality is that it is frequently a massaging of reality when U.S. actions are either normalized or explained away for the American public. One excellent example of this is the use of tear gas by the United States. It has been used regularly in the urban warfare of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also regularly used for “crowd control” in the United States. However, tear gas is considered a chemical weapon under international law, and it is illegal to deploy it against civilians.
True atrocities are frequently lauded as technological advances, or as necessary to minimize loss of life. President Trump authorized the dropping the GBU-43/B, also known as the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB).
It is a 22,000 pound bomb that explodes before hitting the ground. It is basically a larger version of the BLU-82 (“Daisy Cutter”) bomb that had previously been dropped in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Daisy Cutter is a 15,000 pound bomb described thusly:
“The bomb detonates three feet above the ground, spraying tiny droplets of fuel-based explosive into the air where they create a massive ‘air burst’, a huge explosion, marked by a mushroom cloud.
The blast is so powerful that it kills everything within a 600-metre radius. Anything close to the blast is incinerated, while people farther away die when the air is sucked from their lungs.”
These are not precision weapons by any stretch, but they fit well with what has become US military (and political) parlance as “shock and awe.” These two ordinances are the largest non-nuclear munitions in the U.S. arsenal.
War crimes go far beyond these dramatic weapons, [including cluster bombs (which stupidly are the same color as the MREs supposedly dropped for the civilian population), “depleted” uranium munitions, and the illegal use of white phosphorus equipped – fragments of which burn not only through vehicles, but the human bodies they land on] to immunizing military personnel and contractors from prosecution in zones, and expropriation of resources and wealth. To get an idea of how convoluted and complex the various “agreements” of war, operational guidelines, and restructuring of national law, ownership, and resources can be, I encourage a quick read of The Iraq Agreement: the Devil is in the details.
Robert Koehler has good grounds to question our definition of “national security” and what we will allow to ensure it. The very concept has become so broad that it can cover any eventuality foreign or domestic. Of perhaps even greater concern is the evolution of “freedom”, which is accepted as as synonym for “democracy” but frighteningly is equated with free market capitalism. For example, when George W. Bush claimed that we were “freeing” the Iraqi people, he was explicitly referring to privatizing their oil reserves. Any political concept as broad as these has little to do with either security or freedom, but is central to the evisceration of all the things we think we are and stand for.
