Robin Shepherd of the London-based Henry Jackson Society makes an important point about the classified documents on Afghanistan that Wikileaks revealed this week: the descriptions of “accidental killings by our soldiers of hundreds of innocent civilians — revellers at wedding parties, kids in school buses, ordinary people going about their daily business who tragically found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time” — sound very much like the kinds of accidental civilian deaths for which the Goldstone Committee wants Israel charged with war crimes.
In both cases, Shepherd notes, the civilian casualties were the inevitable result of combat against a terrorist organization that “systematically hides behind the civilian population”: the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in Gaza. Yet several coalition countries have been “cheerleading the passage of the Goldstone Report on Gaza through the United Nations,” not realizing that the precedent they’re setting could eventually be used against their own soldiers.
Shepherd doesn’t give the numbers, but they are shocking: of the 45 countries with troops in Afghanistan, only 12 voted against endorsing the Goldstone Report in the UN General Assembly. Twelve voted in favor, and 21 abstained.
Notable abstainers included Britain and France — which, as the second- and fourth-largest troop contributors to Afghanistan, are among the most vulnerable to Goldstone-style charges — and Georgia, which faces allegations of similar “war crimes” during its 2008 war with Russia. Turkey, which routinely kills civilians in its battles with the PKK, voted “yes.”
Granted, the Goldstone Report was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, which has never shown any interest in investigating any country but Israel. So coalition members probably don’t have anything to fear from that quarter. But the HRC is not the only player on this field.
An acquaintance recently reported being shocked when, at an academic conference, a guest speaker from the International Criminal Court explicitly described the court’s plan as establishing a precedent via the “easy” cases it’s tackling now (egregious human rights violators like the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and Sudanese officials involved in the Darfur genocide) that will grant it legitimacy to prosecute anyone for anything, worldwide, thereafter. And once it establishes this precedent, it intends to use it, the speaker added.
But that shouldn’t surprise anyone: it’s what smart courts do when trying to establish a new power (as anyone who has seen Israel’s Supreme Court in action would know). They always start with “easy” cases — ones where the public will like the outcome and will therefore ignore the dangerous procedural precedent. And Israel, due to its global unpopularity, is precisely such a case.
Then, with the precedent set, courts can proceed to “hard” cases, with potentially unpopular outcomes, without fearing serious backlash. After all, you can’t accuse a court of behaving improperly if it’s merely doing what it has done many times before without anyone objecting.
Thus if the Goldstone Report isn’t stopped, the U.S. and its allies will eventually pay the price. But since many of those allies clearly haven’t grasped this, it’s Washington’s job to drive the point home.
Can anyone here imagine the MSM investigating this story. I guess it is not nearly as important to America as Sarah’s banning of books not yet published or ‘supporting’ Pat Buchanan when he spoke in Wasilla.
MSM will not. McCain must. The ad should be airing already, but it’s not.
The msm is to busy checking to see if Palin’s dog pooped in the neighbors yard to follow up on this story!
If that is case, the headline would read “Palin despoils the environment”
This is incredible. #2 over a TWENTY year time span. Remarkable. Alas, it will be unremarked.
I’m as pro McCain and anti Obama as anyone can be. But this is only a so-so line of attack. McCain was probably intelligently discouraging contributions from Fannie and Freddie because of his ancient history with the S&L thing back in the 1980′s. Obama was probably getting mostly legitimate contributions from the kind of young true believers who have fueled his campaign nationally.
The big money that fueled Fanny and Freddie’s unconscionable perks in the lending market went to the big guns, and it doesn’t show up on that list. It was either delivered in envelopes or as lending perks or more probably as insider stock knowledge. Unless politicians are total idiots (always a possibility) the big committee Democrats in 1992 got a lot more than a hundred grand or so a year for the kind of clout they turned over.
The previous, ‘nice guy appraoch’ McCain would have run an ad saying my opponent got six times as much in donations from Freddie and Fannie. The new McCain, who realizes he’s trying to win an election, should simply run an ad with photos of Dodd and Obama, calling them Freddie and Fannie’s top two go-to guys when it comes to spreading around lobbyist cash to persuade Congress to look the other way while they mismanaged hundreds of billions in mortgages.
I see already the knee-jerk Obama response to the news today is that it is McCain-Bush and we can’t afford four more years, whereas McCain’s is we need tough reform on financial regulations. One retro, the other prospective. This is precisely the strategy McCain should pursue only more dramatically, whereas Obama’s Bush mantra is already tired and irrelevant. Why can’t McCain go to Wall Street and deliver a tough speech, along with calling attention to what Jennifer raises here, while Obama is out in the hinterland somewhere. What a perfect opportunity to fuse a negative attack on Obama’s hypocrisy seamlessly into his own “we are the real reformers” positive message. Somebody tell him, please.
Jon Burack, you are correct that Maverick needs to get on top of this potential Wall Street meltdown immediately. For that matter, where is Dubya?
As Glenn Reynolds intimated, Jamie Gorelick is like the Zelig of catastrophe.
Keating Five notwithstanding, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is past president of the Homeownership Alliance, Fannie and Freddie led lobbying association.
Not exactly a promising line of attack for McCain here.
If you look a the internal numbers of some recent polls you can certainly make the case that this recent economic news will help John McCain.
The details of the hypothesis are here: p://tinyurl.com/lehman-obama-mccain
http://tinyurl.com/lehman-obama-mccain
“But this is only a so-so line of attack.”
My quick search at open secrets of Fannie Mae folks donating to Obama shows lots of VPs and office directors (and lots of attorneys…big shocker there). Obviously, those folks have every right to support the candidate of their choice monetarily to the extent the law allows, and I think doing the math would probably suggest that most of Obama’s Fannie/Freddie take comes from smaller donations from “young true believers.”
But I think it’s reasonable to bring up the topic.
When the MSM will not shine a spotlight on a definite lie and a gross breach of commitment it tells us who the MSM is. They lie and they have no commitment except to destroy the American way of life. Get rid of the politicians and the ABC NBC CBS and other MSM trash.
My point is not that Maverick should try to score partisan points as that he needs to reassure voters that he understands what’s going on and give us all a clearer sense of what he thinks the government’s role should be. The Great Depression supposedly began in earnest when a big Austrian bank failed two years after the Crash and lenders pulled in their horns worldwide. Maverick could seal the election deal with a little FDR-style rhetoric. He doesn’t have to promise FDR-style policies — although I wouldn’t put that entirely past him either.
Wow, incredible; good catch Jennifer. Thanks for bringing this up.
Let’s not forget who was on Obama’s VP selection committee but two guys (Eric Holder and James Johnson) with lobbyist connections to Fannie Mae. BTW look at their VP recommendation (Biden). But then Obama can’t be bothered with “playing the game” of “vetting the vetters”.
I think this is a valid line of attack for McCain/Palin to make against Obama/Biden – the S&L fiasco is years old (most of the young voters for Obama don’t know, care or too young to remember) and if Mr. Hope and Change wants to talk about reform, then McCain needs to slam him for all his hypocrisy. Obama wants to “reform” the Fannies and Freddies but still protect allow the very same people to get mortgages who cannot afford them. The whole problem has been Democrats and a few Republicans who think or read (in the Constitutin) a “right” for everyone to own a home regardless of their financial abilities. I say that McCain should run a commerical quoting Obama about the housing mortgage/wall Street crisis and then have a background voice say something like: perhaps Obama’s idea of “reform” is to allow everyone to get their financing through a Tony Rezko rather than the traditional way….
Anyone who thinks that by voting for Senators Fannie and MBNA are voting for real change are frankly, ill-informed or delusional.
Isn’t Fannie Mae headquartered in Chicago? Why would we be surprised that employees from Fannie contributed to their hometown guy in his presidential election? I personally find this one a little desperate.
“Jamie Gorelick is like the Zelig of catastrophe”
And she will be on the comission looking in to what went wrong and will have a hand in writing the report, no doubt.
“I personally find this one a little desperate.”
I agree, this is not the strongest weapon, This is more like something the Dems and leftards would use againt Palin. Kerry and Obama are near the top due to individual contributions to their presidential campaigns, not the PAC money. But if we owned the MSM the way the Dems do, we could make some negative headlines out of this. Howver, we don’t.
Where are the 527s? They could be going after this, even if McCain doesn’t.
Remember Obama chose a man named Johnson who had been a controversial CEO of Freddie Mac, as one of three people “vetting” candidates for BO’s Vice Presidential slot. Obama called Johnson the ultimate “insider” on this committee.
The choice of Johnson generated so much anti-Obama publicity Johnson had to be replaced.
Jon’s right: Obama’s ads will say …”it is McCain-Bush and we can’t afford four more years.”
I could be wrong about this, but isn’t oversight on this a congressional rather than a presidential thing? And let’s see, who is it who heads the committee on that?
From my point of view, it’s a democratically controlled congress that the economy can’t afford any more years of. (
Yeah, OK. I couldn’t think of a way to avoid ending that sentence with a preposition. Sorry)
It would be looked into if it was from authentic and reputable source, but it is not, just another blog
Well, well, wellllll – Jamie Gorelick a board member of either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, eh?? The same Jamie Gorelick who emasculated the ability of the U.S. to find and deal with terrorists before 9/11. And she made millions doing this stuff, too.
Can’t something be done to her and others like her who make money off of poor government service that lines their own pockets at our expense?
Um, I’m no Obama fan, but this really is a cheap shot and it makes you look stupid.
Fannie and Freddie were run by Democrats who staffed them up with “progressive” finance-types. It isn’t surprising they gave the most to the Democratic nominee, and more than it would be surprising to find out that NRA employees gave the most to McCain’s campaign.
OBAMA HAS TO ANSWER A LOT OF QUESTIONS, ABOUT HIS LAWSUIT, IS THIS THE OCT. SUPRISE..OBAMA AND HIS AKA’S, HE ISNOT A U. S. CITIZEN, MAYBE HE’LL NEED HIS TELEPROMTER FOR THESE QUESTIONS.. DOLT!!!
MAYBE OBAMA SHOULD HAVE PICK BILL AYERS AS HIS RUNNING MATE, STUPID BIDEN TOLD A MAN IN A WHEELCHAIR TO STAND UP THE OTHER DAY..CAN’T WAIT UNTIL OBAMA’S LAWSUIT HITS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA…
At this point, Obama could run down an elderly woman on the street and his demented supporters would say she was taking up too much space.
The root of this subject is the root of the current financial mess! The lack of control over housing loans – if the body was warm it could get a loan. Does any ony remember the Savings & Loan mess, where McCain was one of the Seven who fought tooth and nail against any regulation of a financial catastrophe where any idiotic construction plan warrented a loan, because if it failed good old Uncle Sam guarenteed the loan ? Does this sound familiar ?
Democrats created the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problems years ago, in a well intentioned but failed effort to allow low income groups to buy houses. They stopped ALL eforts at reform until it was too late. Now they are trying to blame Bush, McCain and Republicans, everyone but themselves. That’s the Gods truth and here is the proof:
http://strategicthought-charles77.blogspot.com/2008/09/democrats-created-fannie-mae-and.html
McCain hasn’t said anything because he took money from Franny and Freddie too. . . saying “it’s not as much” is no excuse. He took the funds.