By Binoy Kampmark
March 04, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- The guilty can be
devious in concealing their crimes, and their
role in them. The greater the crime, the more
devious the strategy of deception. The breaking
of international law, and the breaching of
convention, is a field replete with such
figures.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has
presented a particularly odious grouping, a good
number of them neoconservatives, a chance to
hand wash and dry before the idol of
international law. Law breakers become
defenders of oracular force, arguing for the
territorial integrity of States and the sanctity
of borders, and the importance of the UN
Charter.
Reference can be made to Hitler’s invasions
during the Second World War with a revoltingly
casual disposition, a comparison that seeks to
eclipse the role played by other gangster powers
indifferent to the rule and letter of
international comity.
Speculation can be had that the man in the
Kremlin has gone mad, if he was ever sane to
begin with. As Jonathan Cook
writes with customary accuracy, western
leaders tend to find it convenient “that every
time another country defies the West’s
projection of power, the western media can agree
on one thing: that the foreign government in
question is led by a madman, a psychopath or a
megalomaniac.”
STOP:
Have you seen "Help Tom with medical
expenses to fight leukemia"?
I
thought you might be interested in
supporting this GoFundMe,
https://gofund.me/8b902e5a
More
details here
Please share the
fundraiser on your social media to
help spread the word.
|
It might well be said that the US-led Iraq
invasion in 2003 was a product of its own mental
disease, the product of ideological and
evangelical madness, accompanied by a conviction
that states could be forcibly pacified into a
state of democracy. Where there was no evidence
of links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda operatives
responsible for the attacks on the United States
on September 11, 2001, it was simply made up.
The most brazen fiction in this regard was
the claim that Iraq had the means to fire
weapons of mass destruction at Europe
within 45 minutes. Showing that farce
sometimes precedes tragedy, that assessment was
cobbled from a doctoral dissertation.
When the invasion, and subsequent occupation
of Iraq, led to sectarian murderousness and
regional destabilisation, invigorating a new
form of Islamicist zeal, the neocons were ready
with their ragbag excuses. In 2016, David Frum
could offer the idiotic
assessment that the “US-UK intervention
offered Iraq a better future. Whatever [the]
West’s mistakes: sectarian war was a choice
Iraqis made for themselves.” Such ungrateful
savages.
On Fox News Sunday, this nonsense
was far away in the mind of former Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice. She could
merely nod at the assertion by host Harris
Faulkner that “when you invade a sovereign
nation, that is a war crime… I mean, I think
we’re at just a real, basic, basic point there.”
Jaw-droppingly to those familiar with Rice’s
war drumming in 2003, she agreed that the attack
on Ukraine was “certainly against every
principle of international law and international
order.” That explained why Washington was
“throwing the book at [the Russians] now in
terms of economic sanctions and punishments is
also part of it.” She also felt some comfort
that Putin had “managed to unite NATO in ways
that I didn’t think I would ever see again after
the end of the Cold War.”
As Bush’s National Security Advisor, Rice was
distinctly untroubled that her advice created a
situation where international law would be
grossly breached. She was dismissive of the
role played by UN weapons inspectors and their
failed efforts in finding those elusive weapons
of mass destruction and evidence of an Iraqi
nuclear program. “The problem here is that there
will always be some uncertainty about how
quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons,”
she warned in 2002. “But we don’t want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
As the seedy conspiracy to undermine security
in the Middle East and shred the UN Charter
gathered place in 2002, those against any Iraq
invasion were also denouncing opponents as
traitors, or at the very least wobbly, on the
issue of war. Frum,
writing in March 2003, was particularly
bothered by conservatives against the war – the
likes of Patrick Buchanan, Robert Novak, Thomas
Fleming, and Llewellyn Rockwell. Thankfully,
they were “relatively few in number, but their
ambitions are large.” They favoured “a fearful
policy of ignoring threats and appeasing
enemies.”
In the Ukraine conflict, the trend has
reasserted itself. Neoconservatives are out to
find those appeasing types on the Right – and
everywhere else. “Today,”
rues Rod Dreher, “they’re denouncing us on
the Right who oppose war with Russia as Neville
Chamberlains.” Conservatives
are mocked for daring to understand why
Russia might have an issue with NATO expansion,
or suggest that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is
not, in the end, of vital interest to
Washington. “It’s Chamberlain’s folly,” comes
the
improbable claim from Matt Lewis of The
Daily Beast, “delivered with a
confident Churchillian swagger.”
A more revealing insight into neoconservative
violence, the lust for force, and an almost
admiring take on the way Putin has behaved, can
be gathered in John Bolton’s recent assessment
of the invasion. Bolton, it should be
remembered, detests the United Nations and was,
just to show that President George W. Bush had a
sense of humour,
made US ambassador to it. For him,
international law is less a reality than a guide
ignored when power considerations are at play –
an almost Putinesque view.
Almost approvingly,
he writes in The Economist of the
need to “pay attention to what adversaries
say.” He recalls Putin’s remark about the
Soviet Union’s disintegration as the 20th
century’s greatest catastrophe. He notes those
efforts to reverse the trend: the use of
invasions, annexations and the creation of
independent states, and the adoption of “less
kinetic means to bring states like Belarus,
Armenia and Kazakhstan into closer Russian
orbits.”
With a touch of delight, Bolton sees that
“the aggressive use of military force is back in
style. The ‘rule-based international order’
just took a direct hit, not that it was ever as
sturdy as imagined in elite salons and academic
cloisters.” And with that, the war trumpet
sounds. “World peace is not at hand. Rhetoric
and virtue-signalling are no substitute for new
strategic thinking and higher defence budgets.”
In this equation, the UN Charter is truly doomed
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Reader financed- No
Advertising - No Government Grants -
No Algorithm - This
Is Independent
Registration is not necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.