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Following in the footsteps of its cohorts in the Zionist regime, the Trump administration has taken action to interfere with and to deter investigations into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan by US troops, and war crimes against Palestinians by Israeli Occupation Forces in occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, particularly the repeated murder of unarmed children during weekly March of Return protests.
As reported by Common Dreams on June 12:
The International Criminal Court on Thursday rebuked the Trump administration for slapping sanctions and travel restrictions on court staff investigating alleged war crimes committed by U.S., calling the action "an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law."
After repeatedly threatening to take action against the ICC if they continued to pursue investigations into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Israeli war crimes in occupied Palestine, Trump finally carried through with those threats and signed an executive order authorizing the sanctions and travel restrictions against ICC staff and their family members.
The new statement from the Hague-based body came after President Donald Trump issued an executive order authorizing the actions targeting ICC staff and their family members—as well as anyone who has "directly engaged in any effort by the ICC" to investigate the U.S. or a U.S. ally—as the Trump administration continues to lash out over ongoing investigations into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. forces and others in Afghanistan and alleged war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians.
"These attacks constitute an escalation and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law and the court's judicial proceedings," the statement said. "They are announced with the declared aim of influencing the actions of ICC officials in the context of the court's independent and objective investigations and impartial judicial proceedings."
In other words, the US is attempting to interfere with the ICC investigation into US and Israeli war crimes in order to protect the US and Zionist perpetrators of these war crimes, which have been well documented both in the Gaza Strip and in Afghanistan.
And as the Human Rights Watch declared, it is also an attempt to thwart justice for the victims of these heinous crimes:
The Trump administration’s announced action against the International Criminal Court (ICC) escalates its efforts to thwart justice for victims of serious crimes.
Trump’s executive order declared a “national emergency” over the investigations, which he claims posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” They certainly do pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the “foreign policy of the United States,” as they threaten to expose in a court of law the US and Zionist war crimes which are part and parcel of the western imperial occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, carried out on a nearly daily basis.
The text of the executive order reads, in part:
I therefore determine that any attempt by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any United States personnel without the consent of the United States, or of personnel of countries that are United States allies and who are not parties to the Rome Statute or have not otherwise consented to ICC jurisdiction, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.
In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the US to impose sanctions against the ICC in response to their pending probe into Zionist war crimes.
"The U.S. government under President Trump has spoken forcefully against the ICC for this travesty," Netanyahu said, "and I urge all your viewers to do the same and ask for concrete actions, sanctions, against the international court. Its officials, its prosecutors, everyone."
Now once again, as has become commonplace with this administration, Trump has responded with the very action demanded by his Zionist puppeteers. And really, was anything less really to be expected from a US president who prides himself as the most Zionist president ever, so much so that he has even joked that if he loses his presidency in the upcoming US re-election, he will run and win as president of Israel?
It isn’t difficult to see through the veil of lies into what is really going on here.
“Asset freezes and travel bans are for human rights violators, not those seeking to bring rights violators to justice,” Richard Dicker, international justice director at Human Rights Watch said. “By targeting the ICC, the Trump administration continues its assault on the global rule of law, putting the US on the side of those who commit and cover up grave abuses, not those who prosecute them.”
The issue of war crimes entirely aside, it’s high time the American people wake up and realize the ongoing war in Afghanistan is a complete and total fraud. Bush allegedly invaded and declared war on the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attack, claiming the Taliban was hiding Bin Laden, who was allegedly the mastermind of the terrorist attack which was allegedly carried out by 19 mostly Saudi hijackers, none of which were Afghanis. No action was taken against Saudi Arabia. Years later, US special forces under Obama allegedly captured and killed Bin Laden in a cave in Pakistan. Yet here we are, many years later, and still the US is in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, who can no longer be hiding Bin Laden who is by now, according to the official story, many years long dead.
And remember, that was the one and only reason given for the invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghani territory by US troops, who were just coincidentally being paid primarily not to hunt Bin Laden (who had for years been on dialysis in a CIA safe house) but to protect poppy fields, the harvest being exported under the watchful eye of the CIA to fuel the illicit opium and trade, used in the production of heroin. Along with US troops, members of the CIA may also stand to be charged with committing war crimes in Afghanistan.
Countless US soldiers have come forth describing the atrocities they were commanded to carry out, or were forced to watch their comrades carry out. There is by now more than enough evidence that war crimes were indeed committed against Afghani civilians - men, women and even children - by US troops, even without an investigation by an international court. Such an investigation, so strongly opposed by the Trump administration, would only serve to prove in the eyes of the international community in an internationally recognized court, what the evidence already shows through numerous eyewitness accounts by disgruntled and traumatized US servicemen and women publicized in the Afghanistan Papers.
There can be no doubt as to why the leaders of the US and Israel stand in such staunch opposition to an indedpendent investigation being carried out by the ICC, and that is because they are clearly guilty of the crimes they are being accused of perpetrating.
“Trump's sanctions order against ICC personnel and their families—some of whom could be American citizens—is a dangerous display of his contempt for human rights and those working to uphold them."
—Hina Shamsi, ACLU
Great reporting.