On October 29, US president Donald Trump took to Twitter, warning that a migrant “caravan” approaching the US-Mexico border was “an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” On November 18, as the caravan reached Tijuana — and the border — he reiterated the “invasion” claim: “[T]he U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it.”

As a popular conservative radio host frequently reminds us, “words mean things.”

It’s perverse to characterize a migrant “caravan” — a group of civilian non-combatants, many of them women and children, moving from one place to another in search of safety, freedom and livelihood — as an “invasion.” Is the morning commute of millions of workers into every major American city an “invasion?” More than 1 in 10 Americans move each year —  often across city, county, even state “borders.” Are they “invaders?”

An invasion is a violent military operation. Moving from Tegucigalpa to Topeka to find a job and rent an apartment isn’t anything like that.

But Trump used the word, and even promised a military response. So, for the sake of argument, let’s take him seriously. There’s a war on at the border, at least in his fevered imagination.

The United States is signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, under which “[e]ach State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.”

If the confrontation at the San Ysidro border crossing is indeed combat to defeat “invaders,” then the use of “tear gas” (CS — a chemical weapon banned under the Convention) on the “caravan” members on November 26 was a war crime.

The victims were on the Mexican side of the border. Mexico is a party to the Rome Statute, which means that crimes committed on its soil — regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators — come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

It’s unlikely that the Court can bring the perpetrators (which would include the entire chain of command which authorized the use of CS, up to and including President Trump) to trial and impose due punishment, as the US declines to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction.

What the Court CAN do is investigate the incident and, if it determines that a war crime was committed in a territory under its jurisdiction, issue Interpol “Red Notices” requiring states which DO recognize its jurisdiction to apprehend the perpetrators and hand them over for trial if the opportunity to do so presents itself.

The practical effect of such an action would be that neither President Trump nor any of the other responsible individuals would be able to travel outside the US without fear of arrest. Ever.

This should be a “teachable moment.” Words do indeed mean things, and a when a president uses a word mendaciously and for political advantage, the obligations and consequences attached to that usage should follow.

I’m emailing this column to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — [email protected]. I hope others will similarly act to call the crime in question to the Court’s attention.

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

• “El uso de gas lacrimogeno en la frontera fue un ‘crimen de guerra,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, La Tribuna Hispana USA, 11/28/18
• “Invasion correct word,” by Rick Margin, Wilmington, North Carolina Star-News, 12/05/18

Hanna Scott of Seattle’s KIRO radio reports that prosecutors in Washington are wrestling with the question of whether or not the state’s “Red Flag law” applies to minors, and trying to stretch it to do so. Under the “law,” Scott writes, a judge can issue an “Extreme Risk Protection Order” to “temporarily suspend a person’s gun rights, even if they haven’t committed a crime.”

Scott gets that part wrong. Judges who issue ERPOs aren’t “suspending” their victims’ gun  rights and constitutionally mandated due process and property protections. They’re ordering police to violate those rights and ignore those protections. There’s a difference.

Rights are inherent characteristics possessed by all human beings, not privileges  to be granted or withheld at the whim of a bureaucrat in a black dress. And the point of the 5th Amendment’s due process clause is precisely to protect the life, liberty, and property of Americans against arbitrary judicial edicts. Under the US Constitution, “laws” which violate those protections are null and void.

Several state governments have passed, or begun more active implementation of, these “Red Flag laws” since a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida in February.

Maryland’s version of “Red Flag” went into effect on October 1. As of November 20, at least 172 complaints had been filed under the “law,” which allows courts and police to steal a victim’s guns and keep them until a judge decides whether or not that victim is “at risk of violent behavior or suicide.”

In one case, Maryland’s “law” has already put the victim at more than “risk” of violent behavior. Police officers in Ferndale, Maryland murdered 61-year-old Gary Willis when they showed up to steal his guns and he declined to cooperate.

Neither the cops who killed Willis, nor the judge who sent them to do so, will likely be held accountable for the killing of a man accused of no crime and minding his own business on his own property. That’s the very definition of lawlessness.

Why did a judge order police to steal Willis’s guns?  We’re not allowed to know. The contents of such orders are considered state secrets.

What might we call a system under which anonymous judges can secretly order anonymous police officers to expropriate property from citizens who have neither been accused of nor convicted of crimes, on pain of death for resistance?

The only term that seems to fit is “police state.”

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

“[W]e may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” US president Donald Trump told the nation on November 20, but “[t]he United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.”

Many find the president’s statement curious indeed given the seeming consensus among the Turkish and US intelligence communities that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But two simple numbers clarify just how much importance successive administrations,  including Trump’s, have placed on the US-Saudi relationship.

The first number is the number one.

Jamal Khashoggi was one man. He was a Saudi citizen, and considered an enemy of the state by “his” government to boot. He was neither a US citizen, nor was he killed on US soil. In fact, he was technically killed on Saudi soil — consulates enjoy the same “sovereign” status as embassies. His murder, while evil and tragic, was really not any more the business of the US government than the execution of an American in Texas would be Mohammed bin Salman’s concern.

The second number is 2,977.

That’s how many people 19 hijackers (15 of them Saudis) killed (excluding themselves) at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and at a crash site in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

No later than December of 2002, and presumably before that, the US government knew that the 9/11 hijackers had received significant funding and support from Saudi  government officials and members of the Saudi royal family.

That information remained classified until 2016, when 28 previously redacted pages from Congress’s official 9/11 report were finally released to the public — and still “friendly” relations between Washington and Riyadh continued without interruption.

The US invaded Afghanistan (none of the hijackers were Afghans) in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The US government insinuated a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq as part of its justification for invading that country in 2003 (none of the hijackers were Iraqis, and in fact al Qaeda was among Saddam’s most implacable enemies).

But Saudi Arabia got a free pass, as did the United Arab Emirates (where two of the hijackers came from).

Why? Oil, money, and US foreign policy.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE control a great deal of  the world’s oil, and can threaten to disrupt international oil markets (and international life in general) any time they don’t get their way.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also the top two buyers of of US weapons.

Finally, Saudi Arabia and the UAE support the US agenda of isolating Iran and frustrating its regime’s regional ambitions, and allow the US military to operate bases on their territory pursuant to that agenda.

Next to those considerations, 2,977 murders on US soil, most of them Americans, didn’t matter to George W. Bush or to Barack Obama.

Nor do those 2,977 murders, let alone the murder of one Saudi journalist in a Saudi consulate, matter to Donald Trump.

But they should.

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

• “Two numbers that explain why Trump won’t sanction Saudi Arabia,” by Thomas L. Knapp, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11/23/18 [web and print editions]
• “Two numbers explain why Trump won’t sanction Saudi Arabia,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Newsday, 11/26/18
• “Why we are soft on the Saudis,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilmington, North Carolina Star-News, 12/02/18