By Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor
and columnist
Iraq and Libya were both targeted by the
U.S. in the month of March. The anniversaries of
these war crimes must be commemorated, and the
nature of the US/EU/NATO war machine must be
understood.
"The International
Criminal Court should uphold an objective and
impartial stance, respect the jurisdictional
immunity enjoyed by the head of state in
accordance with international law, exercise its
functions and powers prudently by the law,
interpret and apply international law in good
faith, and avoid politicization and double
standards." (Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Wang Wenbin)
March 26, 2023:
Information Clearing House
-- This commentary
really should be part two from the piece I
wrote last week in the run-up to the
anti-war mobilization that took place March 18th
which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the
invasion of Iraq. In that article I made a
similar argument about why the U.S. should be
seen as the greatest threat to the survival of
collective humanity on our planet.
That point, however, needs to be reinforced
because in typical arrogance, on the eve of that
mobilization and the official March 20th date of
the U.S. invasion, the International Criminal
Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Russia
President Vladimir Putin while Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Barack Obama,
responsible for horrific crimes against humanity
and literally millions of deaths combined in
Serbia, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, walk
around as free individuals.
It would be comical if it was not so deadly
serious and absurd. Just a couple of years ago
when the ICC signaled under the leadership of
the
Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda
wanted to conduct an
investigation into possible crimes in
Afghanistan by the U.S. state, the Trump
Administration told the court in no uncertain
terms that the Court would be subjected to the
full wrath of the U.S. government and the Court
quietly demurred in favor of a national probe
that everyone knew was a sham.
This is just part of the infuriating double
standards that Chinese spokesperson Wang Wenbin
refers to. For many in the global South, the
“neutral” international mechanisms and
structures created to uphold international law
have lost significant credibility outside of the
West.
The politicization of the ICC on the
Ukrainian war and the unprincipled participation
of the United Nations that provided political
cover for the invasion and occupation of Haiti
after the devastating earthquake in 2010 are
just two examples of how international
structures ostensibly committed to upholding
international law and the UN Charter are now
seen as corrupt instruments of a dying U.S. and
Western colonial empire.
How did we get here?
It is not a mere historical coincidence that
the world became a much more dangerous place
with the escalation of conflicts that threatened
international peace in the 1990s. Without the
countervailing force of the Soviet Union, the
delusional white supremacists
making U.S. policy believed
that the next century was going to be a century
of unrestrained U.S. domination.
And who would be dominated? Largely the
nations of the global South but also Europe with
an accelerated integration plan in 1993 that the
U.S. supported because it was seen as a more
efficient mechanism for deploying U.S. capital
and further solidifying trade relations with the
huge and lucrative European Market.
Central to the assertion of U.S. global
power, however, was the judicious use of
military force. “Full Spectrum Dominance” was
the strategic objective that would ensure the
realization of the
“Project for a New American Century” (PNAC
). There was just one
challenge that had to be overcome. The U.S.
population still suffered from the affliction
labeled the “Vietnam
syndrome
.” Traumatized by the defeat
in Vietnam the population was still reticent
about giving its full support to foreign
engagements that could develop into a possible
military confrontation.
How was this challenge overcome? Human
rights.
“Humanitarian
interventionism
,” with its corollary the
“responsibility to protect" would emerge in the
late 90s as one of the most
innovative propaganda tools ever created.
Produced by Western human rights community and
championed by psychopaths like Samantha Power,
the humanitarianism of the benevolent empire
became the ideological instrument that allowed
the U.S. to fully commit itself to military
options to advance the interests of U.S.
corporate and financial interests globally while
being fully supported by the U.S. population.
With this new ideological tool, the Clinton
Administration bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999
without any legal basis but with the moral
imperative of the “responsibility to protect.”
By the early 2000s it was obvious that the U.S.
was not going to be bound by international law.
Operating through NATO and with the formulation
of a “rules based order” in which the U.S. and
its Western European allies would make the rules
and enforce the order, the world has been
plunged into unending wars, illegal sanctions,
political subversion and the corruption of
international structures that were supposed to
instrumentalize the legal, liberal international
order.
But white supremacist colonial hubris
resulted in the empire overextending itself.
Twenty years after the illegal and immoral
attack on Iraq where it is estimated that over a
million people perished and twelve years after
the racist attack on Libya where NATO dropped
over 26,000 bombs and murdered up to 50,000
people, the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is
in irreversible decline but the U.S. hegemon,
like a wounded wild beast is still dangerous and
is proving to be even more reckless then just a
few years ago.
The disastrous decision to provoke what the
U.S. thought would be a limited proxy war with
Russia that would allow it to impose sanctions
on the Russian Federation will be recorded in
history, along with the invasion of Iraq, as the
two pivotal decisions that greatly precipitated
the decline of the U.S. empire.
However, with over eight hundred U.S. bases
globally, a military budget close to a trillion
dollars and a doctrine that prioritizes a
“military-first strategy,” the coming defeat in
Ukraine might translate into even more
irresponsible and counterproductive moves
against the Chinese over Taiwan in the Pacific
and more aggressive actions to maintain U.S.
hegemony in the Americas through SOUTHCOM and
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Global polls
of international opinion
continue to reflect that the peoples’ of our
planet see the U.S. as the
greatest threat to international peace
. They are correct.
The commemoration of the attacks on the
peoples of Iraq and Libya is an act of
solidarity not only with the peoples of those
nations, but with the peoples and nations
suffering from the malign policies of this dying
empire today. It is a time of rededication to
peace and to justice, two elements that are
inextricable. In the
Black Alliance for Peace
, we say that peace is not the
absence of conflict, but rather the achievement
by popular struggle and self-defense of a world
liberated from global systems of oppression that
include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy,
and white supremacy.
This understanding is the foundation for why
we are launching with our partners, an effort to
revive the call to make the Americas a Zone of
Peace on April the 4th, the day the state
murdered Dr. King and the date that the Black
Alliance for Peace was launched in 2017.
For Africans and other colonized peoples, the
task is clear. The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of
Domination embodies the anti-life structures of
colonial/capitalist oppression and must be seen
as the primary contradiction facing global
humanity. We recognize that other contradictions
exist. We are not naive. But for the exploited
and colonized peoples of this planet, until
there is a shift in the international balance of
forces away from the maniacs in the “collective
West,” the future of our planet and collective
humanity remains imperiled.
Ajamu
Baraka is Chairman of the Coordinating Committee
of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor
and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda
Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee
of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of
the U.S. based United National Anti-War
Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of
the Black is Back Coalition.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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