Dear Progressive Reader,

On Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine. In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Reuters that Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, “And accordingly, any decisions of this kind are null and void for the Russian Federation from the point of view of law.” However, as Mike Brand notes in an article for our website, the United States is another country that feels it is not governed by the ICC. “Despite the United States’s history of promoting international justice, and its pivotal role in the creation of the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial after World War II,” he explains, the United States “is not a party to the Rome Statute [which created the ICC in 2002].”

In fact, according to Human Rights Watch, “The U.S. participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the court. However, in 1998 the U.S. was one of only seven countries—along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen—that voted against the Rome Statute.” President Bill Clinton later signed the treaty in 2000, but never sent it to the Senate for ratification, and in 2002, President George W. Bush nullified Clinton’s signature when U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stating that the U.S. has “no legal obligations arising from its signature on” the Rome Statute and “it did not intend to become a State Party to the ICC.”

The reason behind this is that the United States does not want its citizens, soldiers, or politicians to be subject to international justice administered by a body that it does not control. As Brand points out, “The tension between the ICC and the United States escalated when, in 2020, the court opened an investigation into crimes committed in Afghanistan by Taliban, Afghan, and U.S. forces. In response, the Trump Administration sanctioned then-ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the ICC’s head of jurisdiction Phakiso Mochochoko. Both were added to the Specially Designated Nationals List, which often targets ‘terrorists and narcotics traffickers.’ ” The Biden Administration subsequently lifted those sanctions, but, as Brand notes in relation to war crimes investigations in Ukraine, “Despite the Biden Administration’s support for coordinating with the ICC, the Defense Department reportedly [still] does not want to give information to the court because ‘they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for [the court] to prosecute Americans.’ ”

Sunday March 19 marks the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq—another action by the United States that is regarded by many individuals and nations around the world as illegal and immoral. Writing this week on our website, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies state, “This seminal event in the short history of the twenty-first century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the Russian invasion through the same prism as U.S. and Western politicians.” They continue, “Most of the world has seen through the lies and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy.” The April/May issue of The Progressive, currently at the printer, will include a series of articles reflecting back on the 2003 Iraq War and other misadventures of U.S. foreign policy that have deeply affected the globe.

This week on our website, Nigerian writer Obiora Ikoku reports on the activities of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenary soldiers operating in numerous countries on the African continent; Glen Sacks looks back at a darker part of President Jimmy Carter’s legacy—the support for rebel groups in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.; and Saurav Sarkar presages the moment when “Mr. Schultz will go to Washington”—the scheduled testimony by Howard Schultz, outgoing CEO of Starbucks, before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Plus, Sam Stein relates his experiences crossing through an Israeli military checkpoint near Jericho. Stein’s visit comes at a time of rising tensions, both over recent attacks by settlers on Palestinians, and as protests continue over attempts by the Israeli government to weaken the power of its supreme court. March 16 of this week also marked the twentieth anniversary of the tragic death of a Rachel Corrie, a U.S. activist working to halt help house demolitions in Rafah. In 2018, Alexandra Tempus spoke with Rachel’s parents Cindy and Craig Corrie as they travelled the country to honor their daughter’s legacy by raising awareness about the situation. “People are always calling for Palestinians to behave nonviolently. If we’re not standing with them, and ensuring that there’s some positive result from this, then I think we set up an even more dangerous situation,” Cindy Corrie told her.

This week also marked the 196th anniversary of Freedom’s Journal, the nation's first African American owned and operated newspaper, which was founded on March 16, 1827. While short-lived (it only published for about two years), the paper “established the vital role of Black newspapers in African American life and politics. It also created the model of journalism that numerous Black journals and journalists would follow in the United States and around the world for the next two centuries,” according to the website BlackPast. Today all forms of media are under threat from a variety of factors. Jeff Abbott reports from Guatemala on the increasing use of prosecutors and the courts to attempt to silence publications looking into corruption. Jake Whitney pens an op-ed on the revelations emerging in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News and the ways the network chose profit over truth. And Nolan Higdon raises warnings about how that Dominion lawsuit might be misused, should it reach the U.S. Supreme Court, to threaten a basic protection for press freedom based in a 1964 Court decision.

Finally, March 16 marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam by U.S. troops under the command of Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. The massacre took the lives of 504 civilians. As I wrote in The Progressive in 2018, a group known as Madison Quakers Inc. continues today with its projects in the region to build homes and schools, drill water wells, and help in other ways to support the people of Quảng Ngãi province. Project leader Mike Boehm is in My Lai this week with a small delegation to view the projects and participate in the annual commemorations taking place there. As Boehm told me in 2018, “We must always remember the past so we do not repeat those mistakes, but I am also looking to the future, and I see it in the faces of the children of My Lai.”

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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