Justice Only for Black Men?

In an immediate response at the Khartoum rally, The Sudanese President countered by claiming that the ICC was a tool of imperialists targeting Sudan for its oil, natural gas and other resources. “We have refused to kneel to colonialism, that is why Sudan has been targeted ... because we only kneel to God,” he told the crowd outside the Republican Palace.

UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann regretted that a warrant had been issued to arrest Sudanese President Bashir stating that, “I am sorry about this decision of the ICC and I think it’s more a decision motivated by political considerations than really for the sake of advancing the cause of justice in the world.”

My issue with the ICC is this: If 300,000 people who died in the conflict in Darfur since 2003 prompted them to sit up and take notice and issue an arrest warrant, where had they been since 2003 when over one million innocent civilians have lost their lives as a result of former US president George Bush’s illegal incursion into Iraq?

There was no justification for the war on the Iraqi people. There were no threats directed towards the United States of America or its people. There was no Al Qaeda operating out of Iraq. Iraqis did not take part in the bombings of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, nor were they involved in any conspiracy against the US government.

Where are the arrest warrants for 
Mr Bush and Mr Blair, who today 
pathetically claims he was duped 
into going along with the former US president when supplied with misleading information on weapons of 
mass destruction?

How come Donald Rumsfeld of the ‘shock and awe’ fame’ whose forces indiscriminately bombed Iraqi civilians into bits and pieces gets away scot free?

And the rest of Mr Bush’s band of neo-cons including Paul Wolfowitz, Daniel Perle, Cheney, Gingrich, Rice, Lott, Kristol, Kemp, Bauer, Ginsberg, Feith, Lowenenberg, Cohen, Scheuemann, Quayle, Bloom, Podhoretz, Ashcroft, Ledeen, Bork, Keyes, Robertson, Donnelly, Abrams?

Why is it that the ICC has not investigated their crimes and issued arrest warrants against these diabolical assassins with the blood of over a million civilians on their hands?

Their methods were all based on deception, and their tools, apart from allowing weapons of mass destruction to be used against the Iraqi people, included manipulating the media and their political office.

They used ‘lies, lies and more lies, religion, patriotism, manufactured enemies, and the glory of democracy to motivate, mislead, oppress, and rob the masses of rational thinking in order to pursue their murderous adventures.’

Their strategy of in using American soldiers as proxies for Israel’s soldiers to kill Arabs, or non-Jewish gentiles, in the Middle East, and any other powerful anti-Israelis that might rise up, had eventually led to mistrust and rejection of American policies in the region and around the world, as well as growing 
rejection at home.

And let’s not forget the atrocities of Ariel Sharon of Israel who today lies in a comatose state. A man who aligned himself with Bush very soon after taking office and rained down atrocities against defenceless Palestinians. 
Do not his actions of massacre and murder followed by the Holocaust perpetrated against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza recently by the current Israeli government warrant an investigation by the ICC?

The atrocities that Mr Bush had committed against the Iraqi populace and the gross fatality numbers are well documented and yet the ICC did not dare raise an issue about his unlawful actions. History would undoubtedly phrase Mr Bush’s presidency as the biggest weapon of mass destruction of present times, and yet it is Bashir from Sudan who is taken to the cleaners. Prosecuting the sitting head of state of 
the Sudan and letting other crooks off the hook smacks of gross hypocrisy by the ICC. Is it because the Sudanese
President is a black man and an African?

Tariq Al Maeena is a Jeddah-based
Arab writer. He can be reached
at talmaeena@gmail.com