RealJournalism20h ago
Trump issues expletive-laden threat against #Iran as details of U.S. aviator's rescue emerge https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/trump-issues-expletive-laden-threat-against-iran-as-details-of-u-s-aviators-rescue-emerge
Trump issues expletive-laden threat against Iran as details of U.S. aviator's rescue emerge

President Trump on Sunday made new, expletive-laden threats to escalate strikes on Iran if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline, following the rescue of a U.S. aviator who was shot down in Iran.

PBS News
Show threadAndreas K

@RealJournalism Please note, #Trump did not only announce that he plans to commit war crimes; strictly speaking, these kinds of threats are already a war crime.

And I know American exceptionalism, yada yada, the USA does not recognize war crimes committed by Americans.

Cough, actually that arms universal jurisdiction on war crimes if the home country of the war criminal refuses to prosecute.

So for the time, the Americans can skate on; nobody wants to piss off the USA today. In a decade?

Apr 5 at 6:35pmElk (canary)
Show threadMr. Bob20h ago
@yacc143 @RealJournalism I don't want to generalize an entire country but the americans threatened to invade hague if convicted of war crimes.. no one is dealing with reasonable or sane people in that country's administration, especially when it leans right
Show threadRev Nathan Ⓥ↔️🇺🇦🇨🇦🇵🇸🇬🇱18h ago
@azterlights @yacc143 @RealJournalism Yes, this was a law concocted during the Bush 2 regime because he obviously took us into war for no reason and committed many war crimes and how dare anyone hold him and his cronies accountable?
Show threadAndreas K15h ago

@revndm @azterlights @RealJournalism You are misunderstanding something here. The Rome Statute is irrelevant. It's just the cherry on the cake.

War crimes are generally a crime in almost any country.

War crimes are also, in theory (not every country has legislated it yet, but they can), crimes with universal jurisdiction. If the home country of the criminal does not prosecute them, any other country is legally entitled to do so.

Today it's generally selectively enforced for a number of

Show threadAndreas K15h ago

reasons:

- political power reasons, e.g. generally countries try not to piss off countries they want to have good relationships with. But as many people might have mentioned, a certain guy in D.C. with a faible for orange make-up seems to have made it his personal goal to lower the power of the USA significantly. Economically, militarily, soft power, pissed off allies, …

- war crime investigations are normally hard. Decade or more hard investigative work abroad, in places that are not

Show threadAndreas K15h ago

cooperative, and then it's far from sure if you can prove the usually not easy to prove legally necessary points. And then there are the American war criminals, of which a surprising number feel that it is a good idea to do a complete public confession of their crimes. In some cases, they were even sworn in before Congress.

So it's literally a question of if/when US power will have weakened enough that some prosecutors (e.g. countries where these are not politically controlled) feel confident

Show threadAndreas K15h ago

to request arrest orders for some visiting Americans, e.g. former senior officers of Trump's adventures or cabinet ministers.

Cynically, e.g. all EU MS should have working war crime universal jurisdiction. OTOH most of them are also NATO member, thus US armed forces members are generally protected, but then guess what, this guy with the orange make-up fetish, he's a big fan of the idea of the USA withdrawing from NATO. Which nowadays triggers not more than a shrug in Europe.

Show threadRev Nathan Ⓥ↔️🇺🇦🇨🇦🇵🇸🇬🇱15h ago
@yacc143 @azterlights @RealJournalism I’m not talking about the Rome statute, to which the US is not a signatory, but the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA) which includes a stupid paragraph about the US being able to use whatever means to “liberate” US officials from the ICC. Which IMO is worse than selective enforcement. The US invading the Netherlands? Formerly unthinkable. Today, not really 😖
Show threadAndreas K13h ago
@revndm @azterlights @RealJournalism It's not the ICC that will lock them up.
Show threadPedestrianError  18h ago
@yacc143 @RealJournalism Given Trump's age and lifestyle he has very little chance of being alive in a decade. At least Hegseth should be if he doesn't drunk drive a cybertruck into a tree or something.
Show threadWilliam Hamilton18h ago
@PedestrianError @yacc143 @RealJournalism
“You only need to hang mean bastards…but mean bastards you need to hang.”
— John Ruth (Kurt Russell), *The Hateful Eight* (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)