U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khali- lzad, responding to the UN Security Council
vote to set up a special court to prosecute the killing of former Lebanese
prime minister Rafik Hariri two years ago, stated before the Council that,
“By adopting this resolution, the council has demonstrated its commitment
to the principle that there shall be no impunity for political assassinations
in Lebanon or elsewhere” (see “UN to prosecute killing of former Lebanese
leader,” Globe and Mail, May 31, 2007). This is, of course, unmitigated
nonsense, as one of the most obvious facts of contemporary politics and
(in)justice is that impunity is a function of power and that there is a
very close correlation between the loss of impunity and hostility and targeting
by the United States. Syria, a U.S. target, is not a potent force in international
affairs, hence it can be subject to a special court. The United States
is the hegemon, hence it decides on special courts and is free of any threat
that one might be applied to it.
As regards assassinations, while pushing for the Hariri “special court,”
the United States openly pays large sums for hired assassinations of its
targets, which, as the United States is doing this, are “Rewards for Justice”—language
actually printed on the briefcases in which the assassins are paid off
(“U.S. hands a $10 million bounty in briefcase for the killing of Muslim
leaders,” Daily Mail, June 7, 2007). It bombed Milosevic’s home in Belgrade
in an attempt to assassinate him on April 22, 1999. It admittedly tried
to assassinate Saddam Hussein in its initial “shock and awe” bombing of
Iraq and U.S. assassinations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been numerous.
(Recall the case in Afghanistan, where a tall man with a beard hunting
for scrap metal with two other farmers was gunned down on February 4, 2002,
because he looked somewhat like Osama bin Laden, a tiny microcosm of the
freedom to assassinate by U.S. armed forces, now used globally (see Michael
Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder). But there is no call by the
“international community” to bring these assassins and their bosses to
book with a special court or otherwise.
Of course, along with the right to assassinate is impunity for gigantic
crimes like aggression—and here also the United States is able to engage
in major violations of the UN Charter, as in the invasion and occupation
of Iraq, not only without the slightest threat of any “special court,”
but with the eventual kindly cooperation by the UN in consolidating the
conquest (see UN Security Council Resolution 1546 of June 8, 2004, which
gives the aggressor in Iraq occupation rights and a UN Security Council
blessing).
The U.S. right to assassinate and commit aggression goes back a long way.
A 1975 U.S. congressional report on “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving
Foreign Leaders” disclosed a string of U.S. assassination attempts against
Fidel Castro (among others) and a former head of the Cuban secret services
has calculated that “there may have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro’s
life” (Duncan Campbell, “638 ways to kill Castro,” Guardian, August 3,
2006). It was an open secret that the Reagan-era bombing attack on Tripoli
on April 14, 1986 was designed to assassinate Kadaffi. It failed in this,
but succeeded in killing his daughter, along with over 40 other civilians.
This assassination attempt was actually in violation of U.S., as well as
international, law—but the higher law of impunity was in force.
Impunity is also a gift of U.S. client state status and, importantly, Israel
is free to assassinate, commit aggression, and violate international law
across the board with complete impunity. Along with the United States,
Israel has the world’s finest remote-control assassination technology ever
devised (which some have found of possible relevance to the sophisticated
Hariri murder). Like the United States, Israel can even maintain an open
policy of assassination—“targeted killings”—as a complement to its steady
and ruthless process of ethnic cleansing. No penalties occur and the “civilized”
world in Europe and North America continues to enlarge its economic ties
with Israel, even as the latter continues to build its apartheid wall in
the face of an adverse International Court ruling, assassinates Palestinians
on a daily basis, and displays increasing signs of moving toward more openly
genocidal violence (see Matthew Wagner, “Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing
of Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2007; Ali Abunimah, “Top Israeli rabbis
advocate genocide,” Electronic Intifada, May 31, 2007). But no “special
court” for Israel, no enforceable action by the UN or governments anywhere.
The contrast with U.S. targets is dramatic. The new Hariri “special court”
is designed to focus attention on Syria’s misbehavior in Lebanon and help
justify ongoing U.S.-Israeli destabilization efforts and a possible U.S.
attack on Syria. Of course, there was no proposal for a “special court”
to try the leaders responsible for Israel’s open aggression against Lebanon
in 2006, which killed 1,000 civilians, put to flight a million people,
and left behind a wrecked and cluster bomb-littered landscape. This was
a U.S.-UK supported aggression by a U.S. client, hence subject to the impunity
rule.
The Hariri special court is a throwback to the Yugoslav Tribunal, established
in 1993, quite clearly to complement U.S.-NATO policy with a faux-judicial
and public relations arm that would assist its founders/principals in going
after the Serb target. The Rwanda Tribunal, modeled after the Yugoslav
Tribunal, has been an equally corrupt political instrument of the U.S.
and its allies, protecting Rwanda dictator Paul Kagame, the initiator of
the Rwanda killings, whose mass murders in Rwanda and the Congo will match
any on the globe in recent decades, but who was trained in the United States
and is in service to the Western powers even as he steals and kills in
his own and local allies’ interests.
When the Yugoslav Tribunal was formed in 1993, one noteworthy feature was
its failure to list as a relevant crime what the Nuremberg Tribunal had
declared the “supreme international crime,” namely aggression. This was
in accord with U.S. interests and flowed from U.S. power, as the United
States wanted no encumbrance to its regular and increasing engagement in
the supreme crime. Thus, when it did so in attacking Yugoslavia on March
24, 1999, it had prepared the ground with this exemption built-in to the
Tribunal Statute.
Interestingly, in the formation of the International Criminal Court (ICC),
which came into existence in July 2002, here too the “supreme international
crime” was left out of the ICC’s orbit of jurisdiction. This was done almost
surely under U.S pressure and under the impetus of the organizers’ eagerness
to induce the United States to join the organization. But in spite of this
and other concessions to this country, including the right to enter into
bilateral agreements with countries willing to exempt U.S. citizens from
the application of ICC claims—Article 98 agreements, also called by critics
U.S. Impunity Agreements—the United States has not only refused to join,
it even passed an act that threatens to use force against any country that
takes a U.S. serviceperson into custody for criminal actions (American
Servicemembers’ Protection Act, also known in some circles as the Hague
Invasion Act). The problem with the ICC is that it left open the small
possibility “that the court free of the discipline of the Security Council
(with an American veto), might actually prosecute Americans” (Mandel).
Obviously, this would never do. What is equally interesting is how the
mainstream media do not discuss and implicitly normalize this consistent
refusal of U.S. officials to allow this country to be treated as others,
as if it is above the battle and the ruler of the world.
In theory, the Yugoslav Tribunal could have indicted U.S. officials, as
its founding Statute made any war crimes in the Yugoslav struggles subject
to its jurisdiction. Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth pointed to this,
plus the fact that no actions had actually been brought against the United
States, to show that the ICC would not be a threat. But Roth misses the
point: the Yugoslav Tribunal was organized by and under the control of
the Security Council where the U.S. had a veto and its political leverage
was great, where all prosecutors and most other high officers were vetted
by U.S. officials, and where the U.S. and its allies wielded other forms
of control (financial, informational), which made the Tribunal a U.S./NATO-controlled
instrument. The ICC would have been less perfectly controlled, and that
imper- fection was enough to keep the United States out.
Despite the limits of the ICC’s reach, Kofi Annan still found that with
the ICC, “We shall have a permanent court to judge the most serious crimes
of concern to the international community as a whole,” and that it holds
forth the prospect of “universal justice” and ensuring that “no ruler,
no state, no junta and no army anywhere can abuse human rights with impunity.”
This is complete nonsense, as the “supreme international crime” and the
supreme international criminal have been and remain beyond the reach of
ICC justice. Kofi Annan adapted well to the demands of the supreme criminal—
which explains his long tenure as secretary-general of the UN—and he seems
to have internalized his master’s view of reality and the master’s rights,
which include impunity. But for most of the world, the supreme crimes carried
out in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are “serious crimes
of concern to the international community as a whole” carried out by rulers
and states clearly abusing human rights with impunity.
It is also dramatically evident that in general impunity is a function
of power and relationship with the supreme criminal. The perpetrators of
the million deaths from the “sanction of mass destruction” in Iraq (Clinton,
Albright, Holbrooke) and those with primary responsibility for the half
a million or more deaths in Iraq since March 24, 2003 (Bush, Cheney, Blair,
et al.), have complete impunity. So do all the mass death-dealing clients
of the supreme criminal, who are either free or who have died at home,
none subjected to a special court: Sharon, Pinochet, Suharto, Kagame, Rio
Montt, among others. In the case of Yugoslavia, Milosevic had his special
court, but not Tud- jman, Izetbegovic, let alone Clinton or Blair.
So the special court to deal with the Hariri murder follows a familiar
pattern. While the Hariri special court is being organized, at the same
time the United States has mobilized a huge fleet of warships in the Mediterranean
off the coast of Iran, it is reportedly engaging in a range of minor actions
including direct military incursions and sponsoring terrorist operations
within Iran and across Iran’s borders. It has issued a string of charges
about Iranian intervention in Iraq and aid to Hezbollah, and is clearly
threatening aggression in what Alain Gresh calls “Countdown to War on Iran,”
(Le Monde Diploma- tique, June 2007).
In the face of this acute threat by a country that hasn’t digested its
last round of aggression in violation of the UN Charter, has the international
community erected any barriers against this imminent attack? Has it done
anything to reduce the impunity of the supreme criminal that might cause
the criminal to hesitate before embarking on another round of aggression?
The answer is a resounding no. It not only fails to issue a peep of protest
or threat, it continues to help the criminal clear the ground for his next
attack by featuring the prospective victim’s foot-dragging in terminating
nuclear activities to which it is entitled under the Non Proliferation
Treaty, but demanded by the UN Security Council under pressure from the
supreme criminal. This is impunity-plus.
Z
Edward S. Herman is an economist, media critic, and author of many articles
and books, including Triumph of the Market (South End Press).
