{"id":2282,"date":"2019-11-13T17:23:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T17:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=2282"},"modified":"2024-12-31T03:51:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T03:51:52","slug":"have-we-found-a-cure-for-the-atrocities-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=2282","title":{"rendered":"Have We Found a Cure for the Atrocities of War?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click:6 mtr octagonal pole<\/a><\/p>\n

The United States has a long history of noncooperation with international legal entities. For example, America is not a member of the International Criminal Court. Add to that the fact that President Trump has not been shy about his \u201cAmerica First\u201d style of foreign relations. But this week, human rights advocates and State Department watchers were shocked when Foreign Policy<\/em> broke the story that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was poised to shut the Department\u2019s war crimes office.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another example of the \u201cstreamlining\u201d of government agencies advocated by the Trump administration \u2014 in part necessitated by budget cuts. The Office of Global Criminal Justice, as it is formally known, has a small staff of about a dozen employees and an annual budget of only $3 million. But the State Department has been asked to cut its budget by 31 percent.<\/p>\n

The office may have been especially vulnerable because it is one of those run by an envoy who is appointed by the president, not career staff. Stephen J. Rapp, who headed the office under President Obama, has already been reassigned to other duties. Rapp was well experienced in international criminal justice systems \u2014 he served on tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone. During his tenure he arranged for an important Syrian defector to provide photographic evidence of FBI detainees in al-Assad\u2019s prisons. According to The New York Times<\/em>, Rapp also pushed Kosovo leadership to accept its human rights tribunal and for Senegal\u2019s prosecution of Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9, the former dictator of Chad.<\/p>\n

But human rights advocates aren\u2019t buying the budgetary excuse. Nina Burleigh at Newsweek<\/em> has more on the story:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt just makes official what has been US policy since 9\/11, which is that there will be no notice taken of war crimes because so many of them were being committed by our own allies, our military and intelligence officers and our elected officials,\u201d Maj. Todd E. Pierce, a former judge advocate general defense attorney at Guantanamo, told Newsweek<\/em>. \u201cThe war crime of conspiring and waging aggressive war still exists, as torture, denial of fair trial rights, and indefinite detention are war crimes. But how embarrassing and revealing of hypocrisy would it be to charge a foreign official with war crimes such as these? That\u2019s not to defend the closing of this office but to lament that is has been rendered irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amherst College law professor Lawrence Douglas, a war crimes expert, said the plan \u201cshould be a source of deep regret domestically and cause for grave concern abroad. The closing makes a powerful statement \u2014 that the Trump administration cares little about the protection of human rights and nothing about the vital work of international criminal courts. Perpetrators of atrocities the world over will, however, be pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n

Efraim Zuroff of Simon Wiesenthal Center\u2019s Israel office, which tracks Nazi war criminals, told Newsweek<\/em> the State Department\u2019s decision sends the wrong message to victims and perpetrators around the world. \u201cWar crimes are now happening all over the world, as you know. Prosecuting them is not the job only of the United States, but to close this office will not help to bring justice,\u201d he said. \u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The office was formed following the 1996 passage of the War Crimes Act, which defined a war crime as a \u201cgrave breach\u201d of the Geneva Conventions. When the CIA began using torture early in the Iraq War and, later, jailing people indefinitely and without trial in Guantanamo, the US was in open breach of the conventions.<\/p>\n

The War Crimes Act is applicable to both foreign and US individuals, including US military and intelligence officials, but civil claims brought by victims against US officials over the last 10 years \u201cfor what are undisputed war crimes,\u201d according to former US Army Judge Advocate General Maj. Todd Pierce, have routinely been tossed out on the grounds that the accused were \u201cacting within the scope of their employment.\u201d Pierce compared that defense to \u201cthe latest version of the Nuremberg defense of \u2018I was just following orders.\u2019 Closing this office dispenses with any lingering hypocrisy that we care to hold war criminals accountable for their acts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click Here: All Blacks Rugby Jersey<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The State Department would neither confirm or deny the shuttering of the office but emailed this statement Newsweek<\/em>: \u201cThe State Department is currently undergoing an employee-led redesign initiative, and there are no predetermined outcomes. During this process, we are committed to ensuring the Department is addressing such issues in the most effective and efficient way possible. We are not going to get ahead of any potential outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, policy wonks and rights advocates fear that the mere discussion of closing the office sends the wrong message about US justice to the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Read more installments in our series \u201cWhile He Was Tweeting\u201d \u2014 keeping an eye on Trump\u2019s wrecking ball.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kristin Miller<\/strong> is a senior producer for Billmoyers.com. She has worked on Now with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason, Moyers on America and Bill Moyers Journal. She\u2019s also been a producer for TED, Sesame Street and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click:6 mtr octagonal pole The United States has a long history of noncooperation with international legal entities. For example, America is not a member of the International Criminal Court. Add to that the fact that President Trump has not been shy about his \u201cAmerica First\u201d style of foreign relations. But this week, human rights advocates…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11837,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions\/11837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}