[JumpCrisscross]

> I would give anything for our leadership which is launching this illegal war to be sent to the Hague

Simpler: send them to prison at home. There is no world in which the Hague can enforce its law in America without the U.S. government's consent. At that point, skip the extra step and make war crimes actually illegal.

[MomsAVoxell]

The only force that can do anything about this, is the American people.

Which is why they have been subverted and subjugated and all their will usurped.

[krapp]

>Which is why they have been subverted and subjugated and all their will usurped.

But America's armed populace and the stalwart vigilance of its militias are supposed to make that impossible.

Americans were more up in arms (literal and figurative) over Obamacare and Covid lockdowns than anything Trump has done, domestically or abroad. The only rational conclusion is that they're either complicit or else they simply don't care.

[MomsAVoxell]

Americans are the most propagandized peoples on the planet. Those bullets can’t stop information, and there is a massive information war going on to keep the American people divided.

Those who could effectively field a real protest or uprising are either too busy trying to keep their credit cards from defaulting, or are living on the streets addicted to drugs. General strikes? Forget it, America doesn’t have the infrastructure in place (local food sources) to sustain such a thing…

[int_19h]

America's armed populace is a relatively small percentage of its citizenry, and predominantly leans right populist, so...

[krapp]

Populations of far less affluent countries under far more oppressive regimes without a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms and a billion dollar domestic arms industry that flooded their country with more guns than people and a culture of "give me liberty or give me death" have managed it.

The right got Jan. 6th and the left got Portland, so resistance is possible on both sides. In any country that took things half as seriously as the US claims to, Washington DC would look like a war zone. But what are we doing? Twerking in front of ICE in frog costumes?

[int_19h]

> But what are we doing? Twerking in front of ICE in frog costumes?

Once again, the people who are broadly approving of violence as a way to solve problems, and who actually have the guns, are largely supportive of what ICE is doing. Many of them are quite literally itching to pull the trigger on some libs. I've been in the middle of that crowd and seen it all close up. Those people are not the potential solution - they are a part of the problem.

Countries with oppressive regimes see revolutions if the population gets discontent enough that a strong majority wants it, or is at least willing to go along with it. That is certainly not true of US right now.

[mvdtnz]

The American people voted for this man in a free and fair election. No subjugation or subversion needed.

[MomsAVoxell]

This man did not say he was going to bomb anything until after he was voted in, so the American people were - once again - completely duped by their own hubris.

[progval]

> This man did not say he was going to bomb anything until after he was voted in

Except Mexico (https://www.vox.com/policy/363146/trump-policy-war-mexico-tr...) and Iran (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4898919-trump-iran-smi...).

[acdha]

A third of the American people voted for him, based on a campaign which promised a completely different economy than he has delivered (remember when people were pretending Biden had an egg-price level in the Oval Office?) and no foreign wars. It is unreasonable to look at that election and say a plurality voted for this.

[JumpCrisscross]

> American people voted for this man in a free and fair election

Americans voted for a man who promised no foreign wars and, in his first term, was relatively peaceful [1].

[1][ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_first_Tr...

[UncleMeat]

And the american people can get their shit together and hang him for his crimes.

[MomsAVoxell]

Now this I would like to see, but I have serious doubts it will ever happen. I don’t think the American people have the courage to do something about their heinous, out of control government, personally. Happy to be proven wrong, because it would be a legitimate step to world peace on behalf of the American people, but I seriously doubt they are, as a population, capable of it.

[UncleMeat]

I largely agree with you. Democratic leadership responded to an attempted coup by slow rolling prosecution with the hope that Trump would simply recede from public life and they'd never have to do the hard thing of trying and convicting a former president.

[MomsAVoxell]

The Democrats have just as much blood on their hands as their Republican counterparts, and that is the problem - the only force capable of dealing with this conundrum is the American people, and they are too busy playing sides to actually confront the reality of their nations heinous war crimes record.

[thrance]

The entire media apparatus is owned by oligarchs: from Fox News to Twitter to Meta, now CNN... All are relaying non-stop right-wing propaganda. There can be no real democracy while information is this captive.

[ncallaway]

> war crimes actually illegal.

To be clear, war crimes are illegal here. They can carry the death penalty.

I think there's a strong case to be made for Pete Hegseth to be executed for his crimes, according to US Law.

But you're right. There's no expectation that the Hague enforce international law without the consent of the US Government. Our government should either try our leaders in our courts, or hand them in manacles and chains to the ICC and The Hague.

But I agree, I don't expect the international community to be able to do this over our objections. It's something we must do.

[JumpCrisscross]

> war crimes are illegal here. They carry the death penalty.

Asking to learn: under what law?

[ncallaway]

18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

---

There are also provisions in the UCMJ that are applicable to members of the military

---

(I also had a consequential typo in my earlier post, which I've now edited. I originally wrote they "carry the death penalty", but I meant to write "they can carry the death penalty", and it depends on the specific circumstances of the war crimes committed.)

[JumpCrisscross]

"Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause" [1].

Hmm. Filing this away for 2028 or 2032.

[1] ¶ (d)(1)(D)

[ncallaway]

Yes, if you’re curious the DoD’s own Laws of War manual uses shipwrecked survivors of an attack as “hors de combat” or out of combat.

This is very relevant to the second strike on the Venezuelan boat. I think the original strikes are also war crimes, but the second strike on the shipwrecked survivors is like… beyond all doubt a murder

[CapricornNoble]

>one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities

Remember when we bombed Yemen and in the Signal chat they laughed about killing a High-Value Target while he was visiting his girlfriend? Sounds like this section would apply for her.

[mdhb]

I don’t think the US is going to be allowed to act outside the ICC for too much longer. All of your former allies are going to insist on it before they will even think about treating your normally again.

The US previously never faced real pressure on this, a new administration would see it as an easy win.

[JumpCrisscross]

> don’t think the US is going to be allowed to act outside the ICC for too much longer

The U.S. is not a signatory. (Most of the world's population isn't subject to ICC jurisdiction [1].)

> All of your former allies are going to insist on it before they will even think about treating your normally again

Nobody is treating the ICC seriously [2].

To be clear, this sucks. But it's America joining China and Russia (and Iran and Israel and India and every other regional power who have selectively rejected the rules-based international order).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/world/middleeast/france-n...

[dragonwriter]

> The U.S. is not a signatory.

Being a signatory is not required for being subject to ICC jurisdiction, though it is one route to being subject to it, and, in any case, not being a signatory is not an immutable condition. So the upthread suggestion that “All of your former allies are going to insist on it before they will even think about treating your normally again” is not rebutted by observing that the US is not currently a signatory of the Rome Statute.

> But it's America joining China and Russia (and Iran and Israel and India and every other regional power who have selectively rejected the rules-based international order).

No, the US despite rhetorically appealing to it when other countries are involved, has led, not followed, in rejecting the rules-based order when it comes to its own conduct.

[OgsyedIE]

The "allies" would have mass riots and six-digit death tolls (shortly after an initial 3-6 month period of adjustment) without the supplies of LNG, fertiliser and payment clearing services the U.S. exports. America has the rest of the west by the balls, with maybe the exception of Australia and Japan. Nobody will even give the C-levels responsible for Grok arrest warrants for the many serious crimes their product carries out.

[babypuncher]

I hope to god the next administration actually holds the criminals in the current administration accountable. Gerry Ford set a disgusting precedent when he loudly said that those who hold the office of the President should never be be held accountable for their actions.

[OgsyedIE]

He believed that within the limits of the political culture of America introducing accountability would lead to a tit-for-tat cycle of imprisonments and executions by each party against the other under the cover story of accountability, with the possibility of gradual escalation towards an end state of states mobilising armored brigades against each other to siege cities and cleanse target populations. Like the Congo, or Rhodesia. His memoirs are wacky stuff.

[dnautics]

unlikely. trump didnt held obama accountable for all sorts of crazy things that happened during his administration (bombing libya, drone striking a us citizen minor, using USAID to mount a fake vaccination campaign for DNA surveillance in pakistan e.g.). why would the next administration hold trump accountable?

[ModernMech]

The Biden administration was prosecuting Trump though. They didn’t complete the prosecutions because Trump’s strategy to avoid accountability was to be reelected and then shut down the investigations, and that worked. But the fact he was indicted by Jack Smith who very likely could have convicted him goes to show lack of accountability is not for lack of trying.

[woooooo]

Its very much for lack of trying. They had 4 years, we got no epstein files and they slow walked prosecutions to happen during the election, thinking it would help them. It didn't work, here we are.

[ModernMech]

It’s clear you didn’t follow these cases if your opinion is the SC slow walked them to enhance Democrats’ electoral out look. They secured multiple indictments and were heading to trial, which they were likely to win. Delays were caused by Trump appointed Judge Cannon and Trump appointed SCOTUS justices.

Securing indictments and going to trial is an instance of actually trying. So you really can’t say they didn’t try, because that is factually false. It’s true they could have done more, but they didn’t do nothing as others are saying.

[dnautics]

i would feel better about that if the biden administration also prosecuted obama. they didn't. besides trump I (nor biden) didnt do any new foreign adventures AFAICT. we had a blissful 8 years of waning US imperialism

[qwytw]

It's unclear if most if not all of those things you were actually crimes legally (regardless of how morally and ethically reprehensive they might have been). Regardless there was an established precedent for what Obama was doing. Not so much for the crimes Trump was being accused..

[qwytw]

He did prosecute his political opponents like Bolton though for doing exactly what Trump did just on a likely several magnitudes smaller scale...

[orwin]

All this fuckery date from at least bush 2nd. Election mess, with heavy involvement of his brother the governor despite promises to revise, crowds attacking poll workers, war crimes, putting incompetent friends at the head of agencies (remember FEMA response to Katrina? Or the initial response to the subprime crisis?), attacks on science programs and schools, and the use of executive orders to bypass congress. Obama was so tame compared to Bush2.

[29athrowaway]

Europe is not the military power that once was at the beginning of the 20th century... aging populations, economic decline, trade deficits, their former colonies are now independent, they haven't waged war in a while.

[mdhb]

Seems extremely telling that you would phrase things that way.

[29athrowaway]

In the 19th and 20th centuries, a European power could prevail in India, China, Japan, etc.

And in the 21st century? not so much. It is a different world now.

Europe is powerful but the Royal Navy couldn't go today to Hong Kong and seize control of it for example.

And military power influences diplomacy.

[jonathanstrange]

> And military power influences diplomacy.

Negatively. That has always been the problem of the US, it's the reason why they cannot act like the most of the rest of the world. The military has way too much influence on decision making.

[29athrowaway]

Just watch one of the sessions of the UN general assembly. There are many speeches about fixing all kinds of situations. If the best ideas were implemented we would be in a utopia with flying cars, free ponies for everyone and open bar. But we don't live in such world because if one motion somehow makes one of the countries with veto power uncomfortable, they will just veto the resolution and that's the end of it. And countries with veto power are backed by military power. That's the world we live in and it has always been like that.

And things work like this at every level in every organization. For example people in your line of reporting at work can veto any decision you make unless you are protected by law, which is an entity that can shut down your company by force.

[kelipso]

That’s just the reality of it. The GDP of Russia and Canada is about the same but nobody cares about Canada from a geopolitical context because it has an irrelevant military.

[pqtyw]

ICC is a joke though. It can only accomplish anything if the home country of the perpetrator is cooperating. Those allies also have much politically important economic and geopolitical concerns than prosecuting war criminals (unfortunately only small minorities in western countries care about things like that at all)

[vintermann]

No, they wouldn't. Not if they're the Democrats as we know them. They fight tooth and claw against the new normal, until it's the new normal, and then they fight tooth and claw to defend the new normal. There's very little principled opposition to Trump in the corridors of power. There's plenty of opposition, but it's more about which horses have been bet on.