The “war crimes” canard pushed by Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump ignores a stark reality: If Iran, and others, are not held responsible for war crimes, then the accusation is utterly meaningless.
Democrats have tripped over themselves to accuse Trump of committing war crimes, or planning to commit war crimes, against Iran. As Michael Rubin detailed for the Washington Examiner, this outrage cycle, adopted by Democrats, establishment liberal media, and the so-called “international community,” is “ignorant, hypocritical, and overblown.”
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Just as notable is that this outrage cycle comes from people who never keep the same passion going in the other direction. Iranian government officials chant “death to America” regularly, and the Iranian regime frequently targets civilians. Iran is doing just that right now, attacking civilian populations in Israel and in Arab countries throughout the Middle East. Iran is also the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, with even soft-on-Iran U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer admitting that Iran attempts dozens of terrorist attacks against civilians in his country in a given year.
Now, when is the last time you have seen Democrats, liberal media, or the “international community” so passionately and frantically decry “war crimes” committed by the Iranian regime?
Much like “international law,” the concept of “war crimes” is completely meaningless if it does not apply to the world’s worst actors. That is because, similar to “international law,” “war crimes” do not exist. They are a standard that civilized nations agree in principle to adhere to, but the reality of foreign policy is that might makes right, and calling something a “war crime” means nothing if it does not carry with it any real form of discipline.
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That is what we see now with Iran. Iran commits “war crimes” practically every day, and yet the liberal global consensus is that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are the real war criminals. This is exactly what we saw between Israel and Hamas. On the brief occasion where the global community could muster a condemnation for genocidal Palestinian terrorists, their war crimes of intentionally targeting civilians and committing massacres and mass rapes had to be equivocated with Israel’s actions.
The “war crimes” accusations can never be levied at Palestinians or at Iran without also being paired with (more passionate) accusations against the United States or Israel. That makes the accusations themselves pointless. The erosion of this standard only serves to attempt to hamstring moral nations in conflicts with the world’s worst actors (such as the Iranians), who never have cared and never will care about “international law” or “war crimes” as it applies to their own decisions.
