{"id":225,"date":"2008-08-17T12:44:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T10:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=225"},"modified":"2008-08-15T19:44:36","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T17:44:36","slug":"russians-in-georgia-blame-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"Russians in Georgia?  Blame us."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.icj-cij.org\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-226\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"International Criminal Court\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/icc.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"101\" height=\"110\" \/><\/a>As I wrote not so long ago, The Great Bear has awoken and the Soviet Union is alive and well.\u00a0 According to CNN, Russia <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2008\/WORLD\/europe\/08\/15\/georgia.russia.war\/index.html\">used cluster bombs<\/a> to kill civilians in their attack on Georgia.\u00a0 This represents a war crime that could be taken to The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.icc-cpi.int\/home.html&amp;l=en\">International Criminal Court<\/a> (ICC).\u00a0 Of course, Russia is not a member, and as it turns out, neither is the United States.\u00a0 Stepping away from the ICC was one of President Bush&#8217;s first activities, which means that in a (yet another) way, we are complacent to the crimes committed by the Russians.\u00a0 It also means that now is a good time for us to revisit signing and ratifying the Rome Statute that established the court and its jurisdiction.<\/p>\n<p>The ICC exists because any country can go too far.\u00a0 It is not meant to usurp power from functioning democracies that enforce their laws, but is meant instead to provide redress to agrieved individuals and countries against dicatorships.\u00a0 Does this include Russia?\u00a0 I believe so.\u00a0 Russia has not yet demonstrated an impartial judiciary and prosecutorial service that provides oversight over the central government functions.\u00a0 Does it include the United States?\u00a0 I wouldn&#8217;t have said so until we began holding captives in Guantanamo Bay, and not providing due process.\u00a0 Torture at Guantanamo is particularly troubling.\u00a0 But it is nothing like the abuse currently going on in Georgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I wrote not so long ago, The Great Bear has awoken and the Soviet Union is alive and well.\u00a0 According to CNN, Russia used cluster bombs to kill civilians in their attack on Georgia.\u00a0 This represents a war crime that could be taken to The International Criminal Court (ICC).\u00a0 Of course, Russia is not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=225\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Russians in Georgia?  Blame us.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4],"tags":[126,128,125,127],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-politics","tag-georgia","tag-guantanamo-bay","tag-icc","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}