Putin’s warrant should swiftly be followed by ones for Biden, Netanyahu, Johnson, Modi, Macron, Xi, Bush...

 + I’m all for the ICC issuing arrest warrants for heads of state and Putin’s warrant should swiftly be followed by ones for Biden, Netanyahu, Johnson, Modi, Macron, Xi, Jens Stoltenberg, Bush, Mohammed bin Salman, Erdogan, Blair and Jair Bolsonaro. There are few clean hands in the world and some are much bloodier than others. But the hypocrisy of Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken offering to provide the ICC with evidence of Putin’s crimes in Ukraine, while running protection for its vassal states such as Israel is truly Olympian. Here’s Blinken denouncing the ICC probe of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians: “The ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction, and we have serious concerns about the the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.” One should note that the US is not a party to the ICC and neither is Russia.

+ It’s worth reflecting, however, that both the US and Russia originally signed the Rome Treaty, authorizing the ICC. (China, Israel, Iraq, Libya, Qatar and Yemen refused.) Then, in the face of subsequent illegal adventures–the US in Iraq and Russia in Crimea–both hastily withdrew, as SuperPowers tend to do when they fear they might be held accountable for their own heinous actions. In the US’s case, Bush told John Bolton in W-speak “to unsign it.” Then after the disclosures about Abu Ghraib, CIA black sites, torture and atrocities from Mosul to Fallujah, Bush signed a law authorizing the US to use military force to free any US citizen arrested by the ICC!

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/31/roaming-charges-86/