LONDON (Realist English). The United States and Great Britain should have been scrupulous about maintaining the international justice system when their troops bombed peaceful cities in Iraq, Afghanistan and African states, says David Hearst, editor-in-chief of the Middle East Eye.
“Not only did they fail to fully investigate their own crimes. They actively obstructed bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC) from working. This obstruction of justice has lasted decades and continues to this day with all the vigour it can muster.” he stressed.
In November 2019, US President Donald Trump pardoned two American officers convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan. And in 2020, Trump imposed economic sanctions and additional visa restrictions against representatives of the International Criminal Court who were investigating war crimes allegedly committed by the American side in Afghanistan in 2003.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, as well as the head of the Judicial Department, Phakiso Mochochoko, have been sanctioned. Their assets have been frozen. It was only in April 2021 that the US authorities lifted sanctions against them.
Mangling the Russian language, this week British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appealed directly to Russians about what was being done in their name in Ukraine.
In his recent address on Russia’s special operation in the Ukraine in the Russian language, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed: “The Ukraine is a country that has enjoyed freedom and democracy for decades, the right to choose its own destiny. We and the whole world cannot allow this freedom to be destroyed. We cannot and will not just look the other way.”
“How does a prime minister of the UK expect to be taken seriously when Britain itself has “looked the other way” countless times? … US-led coalition bombers in Iraq assaulted a whole population. They called it “shock and awe”. Estimates of Iraqi deaths triggered by that invasion vary from under 300,000 to over a million. Brown University’s Costs of War Project calculated that at least 500,00 people perished in the post 9/11 US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.” reminded the Middle East Eye’s Editor-in-Chief.
David Hearst stresses that London is still looking the other way in Yemen, where the projected death toll by the end of 2021 has been 377,000.
Britain actively participated in Barack Obama’s drone strikes. The head of the White House defended the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, calling it a “just war” in self-defense against militants.
Obama has used combat drones ten times more often than his predecessor George W. Bush. In total, 563 strikes, mostly by drones, were carried out in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared with 57 strikes under Bush. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in these countries.
