Public Comment

Recently, the United Nations General Assembly voted 93 to 24 to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Fifty-eight nations abstained from the vote. The resolution accused Russia of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” in Ukraine. President Biden denounced President Vladimir Putin and said he should be charged for war crimes. But is the US so innocent? Why has the United States long opposed the International Criminal Court, which was created by the Rome Statute? The statute has been ratified by 123 nations, but not the United States, Russia or Ukraine. 

In 2020, Donald Trump even sanctioned senior ICC figures involved in investigating possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. How quickly we have forgotten our government’s offshore black sites where detainees were subjected to the most gruesome medieval torture and then dispatched to GITMO, or the “shock and awe” of our invasion of Iraq based on faulty intelligence which resulted in the death of over 1 million Iraqis and the destruction of much of their country. 

If Biden is so incensed with Putin’s criminal behavior, shouldn’t he climb down from his lofty perch and adopt a uniform code of ethics in preventing wars? While we rightfully take aim at Putin’s brigade of criminals on the use of cluster munitions whose only purpose is to create terror blowing up men, women and children into tiny pieces; why have we have long used cluster bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan? They were used extensively, in prior wars by the US in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  

Is it not surprising the United States stubbornly refuses to ratify the treaty banning these hideous weapons? Let’s charter a new beginning by releasing the “forever prisoners” languishing in GITMO who have never been charged with a crime, offering them massive reparations and sending them back to their countries saving US taxpayers $13m per year for each prisoner.  

Let’s close GITMO and return it to its rightful owners, the Cuban government. Finally, let’s halt shipments of weapons to Saudi Arabia which is waging a war on poverty-stricken Yemen which goes beyond the pale of for extreme cruelty and ruthlessness.