Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Another "Goldstone"?

The leaking of a huge amount of secret Afghan materials by a "whistle-blower" on Wikileaks has significant consequences for the Western nations involved, Britain and the US. Notably the vidoes accompanying the papers and the descriptions of the incidents reveal that British and US forces on many occasions attacked gatherings of people that included innocent civilians and killed many of them. In fact, adding up the incidents over six years the total of civilian deaths amounts to thousands, including the mistaken attack on a wedding party where guns were being brandished and used as is Afghan custom. These deaths make the few attributed to IDF soldiers in Operation Cast Lead in 2009 seem like a picnic.

The danger for Britain and the US is that if the UN Human Rights Commission decided that Israel needed to be investigated by a major international Committee, the Goldstone Committee, then of course, how much more would they conclude that Britain and the US should be thus investigated. Expect the UNHCR, dominated by Muslim States, to vote to establish a Committee to investigate the breaking of international humanitarian law by British and US forces in Afghanistan. Then it will become clear that the British Foreign Office and the US Department of State made an enormous mistake in not vigorously opposing the formation of such an investigative committee against Israel, because the precedent has now been set and they will be in the spotlight and their soldiers will be pilloried by hostile forces as was the IDF. Supporting the Turklish position on the flotilla to Gaza will not help PM Cameron avoid this outcome.

On the other hand, through some deal or pressure brought by the US and UK there might not be such an investigation, which will only prove once more how hypocritical the whole international process is. Israel is a convenient target, but Britain and the US should not get away without investigation for much more of the same type of actions.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home