How About ……… Not Doing War Crimes?

The US is looking to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate potential war crimes in the Ukraine.

There is one obstacle to this, the Pentagon is fighting this tooth and nail, because they are worried that this might eventually lead to prosecution of US military personnel for war crimes. (Here is a backup to original in case the New York Times decides to rewrite this without telling anyone, as they have done in the past.)

If we have the best military in the world,™ it would follow that war crimes by military personnel would be extremely rare, and when they did happen they would be rigorously prosecution.

Of course, by the same token, if we have the best military in the world,™ Congress would not have had to remove the prosecution from the chain of command in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

How about just not doing war crimes and relying on American exceptionalism as a defense?

The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the International Criminal Court in The Hague gathered by American intelligence agencies about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.

American military leaders oppose helping the court investigate Russians because they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. The rest of the administration, including intelligence agencies and the State and Justice Departments, favors giving the evidence to the court, the officials said.

President Biden has yet to resolve the impasse, officials said.

The evidence is said to include details relevant to an investigation the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, began after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. The information reportedly includes material about decisions by Russian officials to deliberately target civilian infrastructure and to abduct thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied territory.

In December, Congress modified longstanding legal restrictions on American help to the court, allowing the United States to assist with its investigations and eventual prosecutions related to the war in Ukraine. But inside the Biden administration, a policy dispute over whether to do so continues to play out behind closed doors.

The National Security Council convened a cabinet-level “principals committee” meeting on Feb. 3 in an attempt to resolve the dispute, the officials said, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III continued to object. Mr. Biden has not yet made a decision, the officials said.

………

But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who helped push Congress to ease the restrictions last year on aiding the International Criminal Court, confirmed the parameters of the dispute and blamed the Defense Department for its reluctance.

“D.O.D. opposed the legislative change — it passed overwhelmingly — and they are now trying to undermine the letter and spirit of the law,” Mr. Graham said. “It seems to me that D.O.D. is the problem child here, and the sooner we can get the information into the hands of the I.C.C., the better off the world will be.” 

When  Lindsey F$#@ing Graham is on the side of morality and the rule of law, the other side is in a completely morally indefensible position.

F$#@ Lloyd Austin, f$#@ the Pentagon, and f$#@ their entitled attitude.