Prior to George W. Bush illegally rolling into Iraq based on a passel of lies, Bill Clinton oversaw Papa Bush’s medieval sanctions on the country. The sanctions were not intended to stop Saddam Hussein from building WMDs as we were told by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
They were put in place to starve the Iraqi people, deny basic medical supplies, and turn the country into a failed state. The process resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi children.
Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, went on national television and said the murder of 500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying.
Now we have Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, demanding similar sanctions imposed on Iran.
On Wednesday, Pompeo said the US will terminate a treaty with Iran put into place in 1955, two years after the CIA engineered a coup ousting the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh.
The long forgotten Treaty of Amity was brought up by the International Court of Justice when it ruled the US must lift sanctions that affect the import of humanitarian goods and products.
The Hague said in a preliminary decision the US must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” sanctions that affect exports to Iran of medicine, medical devices, food, agricultural commodities and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation, according to a report at Fox News.
The ICJ’s attempt to prevent the Trump administration from engaging in massive crimes against humanity, according to Pompeo, is “meritless” and accused the international court of “attempting to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States to take lawful actions necessary to protect our national security and abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda purposes.”
Trump and his top neocon adviser John Bolton insist the International Criminal Court has no authority. “As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority,” Trump told the General Assembly at the United Nations. “The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”
The US is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statue in 2000, but it wasn’t sent to the Senate to be ratified. The Bush administration sent a note informing the Secretary-General that it would not ratify the Rome Statute and did not recognize any obligation toward it. Like the Trump administration, the Bush administration openly demonstrated hostility toward the idea of holding nations accountable for war crimes.
The US backed up this defiance by passing the American Service Members Protection Act in 2002 ahead of the Iraq invasion. The law includes a provision to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” Additionally, the act permits the president to order military action against the Court, which resulted in critics calling it the “Hague Invasion Act.”
However, the Bush administration and its neocons decided the ICC would be of use on a selective basis—against its official roster of enemies.
The former Bush UN ambassador (by recess appointment) and current top Trump administration neocon John Bolton declared war on the ICC after it announced it would investigate war crimes in Afghanistan. Bolton said the US will level sanctions against the international organization if it proceeds.
Trump and Bolton are clearing the decks in preparation of military action against Iran. They would like to see a return of brutal sanctions used for over a decade in Iraq.
Iran understands what this means: rapid deterioration of health, targeting water purification (a primary objective in Iraq), communications, agriculture, and medical infrastructure.
The US stated sanctions would remain in place even if Saddam Hussein decided to cooperate with the United Nations, thus demonstrating the sanctions and subsequent second invasion were not about WMDs and unfounded threats to America. The objective was to destroy Iraq, kill its people, and reduce the country to failed state status.
Neocon “creative destruction” is focused on making certain Iran does not pose a challenge to the hegemonic rule of the United States and Israel. Both Israel and the fossilized Sunni-Wahhabi emirates in the Persian Gulf avidly support destroying Iran and killing millions of its people.
