It takes a lot to say some things when the hand that feeds you is the same one that slaps you. You weigh it against your moral true north, you realize you have fewer years ahead of you than behind you, and you no longer have the luxury of accommodating strategic fear. For a crutch, I’ll borrow the wisdom of Rev. William Sloane Coffin.
“There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country“
One of the US Supreme Court cases this year is to determine if a US president has immunity against crimes committed while in office. Trump wants to not have to answer to any crimes he committed or might commit while in office.
Now, this is all around laughable. Rib-cracking angry-sad laughable for those in other countries who have borne the brunt of crimes against humanity committed by US presidencies. No superpower ever exists without significant impact on other smaller nations.
Yet not a single authority in the US – be it judicial, governmental or civil society – has ever paused to say: wait a minute, shouldn’t our American presidents be held accountable for killing thousands in proxy wars fought in other countries on behalf of the US? If such a concern was ever voiced, it must have been drowned by a cackle of hubris.
The cold war was never cold in countries outside the US. Two adversaries – US and USSR – armed and fueled hot flames of death, destruction and the assassinations of presidents in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Middle East. Shouldn’t there be accountability for thousands killed in empire-expansion and preemptive wars that are now provably criminal?
American presidencies have supported the invasion by American multinational corporations into other people’s countries to criminally exploit resources at the expense of local communities and families. Many of these families are still stuck in generational poverty and political subjugation. The stretch-on of apartheid in South Africa had the support of American presidents and Congressional votes.
American presidents have financed, and then supported the prosecution of strongmen in other countries after these rogue presidents got kicked out of office. Casting a moral vote against killer dictators you empowered in the first place is pretzel politics so twisted you can’t tell where the knot of audacious mendacity begins and ends.
Ronald Reagan, touted as one of America’s best presidents, also made criminal decisions that had the worst and and most dangerous impacts in Africa. Beside his presidency’s economic hitmen, he financed the butcher of Liberia, Samuel Doe, bromanced him with an invitation to the White House, and later washed his hands off of Doe’s crimes in all their glorious horror.
These were official presidential decisions made in the interest of US struggle to stave off Russia’s influence in foreign countries. That’s the Cold War that killed thousands in countries that had nothing to do with US or Russian interests.
Through eight complicit US presidencies (Nixon to Clinton) Mobutu was propped up in power by the economic ogre that is Bretton Woods Institutions. Mobutu came to power after a CIA-orchestrated assassination of Patrice Lumumba, a man who had promised to put African interests first. President Dwight Eisenhower, whose presidency gave the Lumumba assassination order was never held accountable.
Lumumba and other presidential assassinations across Latin America have remained unexpiated. What is terrifying is the collective heartlessness of presidencies that know about the civil strife and economic nightmares that followed those publicly documented and declassified crimes against other nations.
It is not enough to blame the internal and regional politics of these countries for their poor economies. The ability for a superpower to continuously meddle in the affairs of a weaker country is the crack the US gives these countries to keep them dependent and compliant zombies. Mineral-rich DR Congo remains a country robbed and looted to its core in order to feed the economies of others.
The rest of the world has lived under the unspoken rule that an American president can reach into any country’s sovereignty with deathly tentacles and do anything to them in the name of “American interests”, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will be done to that American president.
"May God give you grace never to sell yourself short. To risk something big for something good. And grace to remember that the world is too dangerous for anything but truth, And too small for anything but love“
The US has the power and arrogance to NOT be party to the Rome Statute, an expedient move that ensures no American president would be railroaded to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Justice is for the rest of the inferior countries with their small muscles. Of course in politics there are no equal partners. But we must insist on equal humanity.
There is a way to deal with tough presidential decisions that one must make in the interest of the citizens they have sworn to protect, for example if another country actually poses a real threat to US citizens. The president then must make tough decisions that might lead to war and the death of innocent non-combatants.
I’m talking about decisions that are not carried out of malicious intent, or out of exploitative measures and the dismissal of other’s humanity. I’m talking about unavoidable decisions where no other measures seem possible. Such decisions, if carried out, have and should always involved compensation and long-term reparative measures for non-combatants harmed in other countries.
Until we no longer live in a world of political subjugation, those who have designated themselves the superpower position must be willing to pay – fully, affectively and effectively – for their ability to cause harm in other countries.
Unfortunately, the US has a very poor record of making amends where presidential decisions have left irreparable damage in other communities.
All other examples of crimes committed while in office that have been bandied around during the SCOTUS case on presidential immunity seem obnoxiously personal and private. It’s a tad embarrassing that in this age of evolved democracies, a country carrying itself as the beacon of modern democracy is faced with a former POTUS and presidential candidate in court over salacious crimes of his own making.
Should he be excused for the most ridiculous acts of calculated folly? That’s for Americans to decide. If it’s any consolation to him, the rise and fall of empires is filled with men and women of great power and a seemingly inescapable burden of moral decrepitude. What is important is the decisions presidents make that affect the lives of others.
I understand how political power plays out in a set-up where the “strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must”. But I also understand that the collective weak have always had a voice that time and again, has succeeded in defeating the oppressive will of the powerful. No president, American or other, should be above the law.
"Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race... Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports - one planet indivisible... with liberty, justice and peace for all"
