It seems W has unwittingly pled guilty to being a war criminal:
Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday inadvertently condemned “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq” as he delivered remarks criticizing Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
This got me thinking about a post I wrote at the end of February, in which I observed that there was no meaningful distinction between what Bush did and what Putin did. In looking through my archives, I realized that for reasons I can’t reconstruct, I never posted it. So here it is. I wrote it on the 28th of February, when it would have been more timely, but what the heck, now that George has acknowledged its truth, I might as well put it up:
The international criminal court is considering charges against Putin for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is no doubt guilty of those things, but let us pause.
Back in law school some of the professors would note that some legal arguments, made by judges or by lawyers, amounted to distinctions without a difference. That is, they attempted to amplify an irrelevant fact into a sufficient reason to decide that controlling precedent or clear statutory language did not apply to the case at issue.
I would submit that anyone who would argue that there is any meaningful distinction between what Putin is doing in Ukraine, and what Bush did in Iraq, would need to rely on this type of argument. Both invaded countries that posed no threat to them based on rationales that were based on lies, which even, had they been true, would not have justified the actions they took. It really is as simple as that. Perhaps the only distinction, which I would argue is not a legitimate difference, is that Bush managed to get a majority of the United States Congress to pretend to believe his lies and endorse his misadventure. So far as I know, Putin felt no need to get his rubber stamp legislature to do as our Congress did.
Neither one will ever actually face a trial before the International Court, but it’s impossible to argue that only one deserves to be indicted. America is lucky that few countries have raised this issue in response to our push for sanctions.
After I wrote the above, I stumbled across this in which we learn that our actions in Iraq were different in some way:
Some of the things that we did in the nineteenth century or in the 1970s or out of our anger and grief after 9/11 were bad, okay, but they aren’t the same. They were another era with different rules, different motivations, different moralities and different levels of social and political maturity.
The fact is that, confining ourselves just to the Iraq situation, the situations are pretty much the same. We attacked a sovereign nation without any actual provocation. That shouldn’t stop us from doing what we can to stop Putin, but as is the case with our other crimes against humanity, (e.g., slavery and genocide of Native Americans) it’s important that we acknowledge our history and learn from it.
One must conclude from Bush’s inadvertent admission, that somewhere in the depths of his disordered brain, he realizes the extent of his guilt. Perhaps he’ll consider turning himself in to the International Criminal Court and invite Vlad to join him.