In March of 2003, the United States launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

The US regime promoted that illegal war of aggression, starting well in advance, through the manufacture and repetition of  falsehoods for the purpose of cultivating fear over non-existent threats, and loathing over non-existent connections between the Iraqi regime an the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

In the execution of that illegal war of aggression, thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died.

Twenty years later, none of the American culprits in that deadly deception operation have been brought to justice. Some — for example, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and secretary of state Colin Powell — have since died. Others — for example, president George W. Bush,  and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice — remain not just alive and at large, but even prominent, influential, and widely respected.

As for “opinion leaders” who supported the war because they believed the US regime’s falsehoods, there’s a split.

Some have openly admitted their error and apologized for it; among those, some have even managed to resist subsequent temptations to support American military adventurism abroad.

Others, while admitting they were fooled by specific falsehoods, have continued to defend the war as justified because, simply put, Saddam Hussein was a bad man. Most of those commentators have subsequently supported other US military misadventures in the name of “defending democracy,” etc.

And still others continue to defend the falsehoods themselves. For example, despite a grand total of zero post-1991 chemical weapons, and zero chemical weapons demonstrably controlled by Saddam after 1991, ever being recovered — Bush himself joked about that later — some insist that the weapons were there and that they and the equipment used to make them were spirited away in truck convoys to Syria even as US aircraft flew over, and US troops converged on, the sites where they were supposedly manufactured and stored.

Some were fooled, eventually noticed, and resolved to never get fooled again. Some were fooled, eventually noticed, but were gullible enough to fall for the same tricks again and again. Some were fooled and remain fooled to this day.

That’s how it goes, I guess.

But it’s incumbent upon that first group, and on those who were never fooled in the first place, to take George W. Bush’s words to heart:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

And, having taken Bush’s malapropic advice,  to pass it on to subsequent generations by continually asserting and insisting on the irrefutable historical fact:

In March of 2003, the United States launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Well, I think it’s justified,” US president Joe Biden said of news that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian president Vladimir Putin and “children’s rights commissioner” Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over their actions in Ukraine. “[The ICC’s jurisdiction is] not recognized internationally by us, either. But I think it makes a very strong point.”

Here’s the thing about the ICC’s jurisdiction: It extends to crimes committed in countries which recognize that jurisdiction, even when the alleged criminals aren’t from those countries.

Consider an American visiting, say, Paris, who’s accused of a murder there. Just because he’s an American, it doesn’t follow that the French courts have no jurisdiction to have him arrested and tried — whether the US regime “recognizes” that jurisdiction or not.

Joe Biden wants to have it both ways on that “very strong point.”

His administration opposes ICC investigations into alleged Israeli crimes in Palestine because, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken points out, “Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction.” But the state of Palestine — where the alleged crimes occurred — is an ICC jurisdiction area, bringing Israelis who commit crimes there under its purview.

Nor does it seem likely that he’ll reverse the Trump administration’s denial of ICC jurisdiction over alleged US war crimes in ICC member states such as Afghanistan.

Interestingly, Ukraine isn’t an ICC member state. It just selectively “accepts ICC jurisdiction” in certain matters. Read: Matters concerning alleged crimes by regimes with which it’s at odds. Let a Ukrainian politician come under ICC scrutiny and such “acceptance” will likely pull a screeching 180-degree turn.

In practice, the ICC seems interested in investigating and prosecuting war crimes wherever it’s allowed to. Which means: Wherever the US and EU regimes like it, or at least don’t mind too much.

Vladimir Putin no doubt has a lot to answer for, but he’s not alone.

As a US Senator and vice-president, Biden supported the US war in Afghanistan, and as president arguably approved war crimes there even as he oversaw the US exit from the conflict.  Throwing himself — not to mention several of his predecessors — on the mercy of the court would make, in Biden’s own words, a “very strong point.”

If he’s serious about making such points, he should ask the US Senate to ratify the Rome Statute, placing himself under the court’s jurisdiction as well.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On March 14, a Russian SU-27 fighter brought down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea. The exact details of where and how remain a mystery even after the release of drone video showing what appears to be a dump of jet fuel onto the drone, but those details don’t matter much. The incident mainly serves as an excuse for more ratcheting up of US-Russian tensions around the war in Ukraine.

When I think of drones, I’m more likely to think of music — yes, music — than of unmanned military aircraft. And thinking about the drone effect in music provides a useful analogy to US foreign policy.

Simply put, the function of a drone in music is to play a single underlying note or chord continuously throughout a song, while layering melodies/harmonies above it. Those melodies/harmonies are specific variations; the drone note is the theme.

The US foreign policy drone note since at least as far back as World War 2, and certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union has been “global hegemony.” That is, the US not just as world cop, but world judge, world jury, and world executioner.

The martial melody the US regime plays over that drone note is full-spectrum dominance, which the US Department of Defense defines as “[t]he cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment, which includes cyberspace, that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”

But if the world is a big band, nowhere near all of its 195 regimes agree to accept the US as its leader,  play in the same key,  or keep the same beat.

If you’ve ever played in a band (other than maybe an experimental jazz combo), you know what happens when each member plays or sings in different keys, at different tempos, and in different time signatures.

You don’t get a song.

You get an ugly mess.

If you’re smart (and maybe after a brawl or three), you eventually figure out that this band isn’t ever going to get on the same sheet of music and decide to break up.

Much of the world has no interest in playing with the US band. They prefer to form their own combos, or to pursue solo careers.

The US should give up its ugly drone and melody/harmony scheme and play a different tune: “Give Peace a Chance.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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