{"id":509712,"date":"2010-04-03T04:35:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T08:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/?p=11802"},"modified":"2010-04-03T04:35:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-03T08:35:23","slug":"is-karl-rove-a-war-criminal-don%e2%80%99t-look-to-fp-for-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/509712","title":{"rendered":"Is Karl Rove a War Criminal? Don\u2019t Look to FP for the Answer!"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Kevin Jon Heller <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I love Foreign Policy’s blog, Passport.\u00a0 Along with Democracy Arsenal, it’s one of the two best blogs for analysis of (duh) US foreign policy.\u00a0 Which is why I was shocked to read a recent post<\/a> by Andrew Swift entitled “Is Karl Rove a War Criminal?”, because Swift’s analysis would make a first-year law student blush in embarrassment.\u00a0 Here is how he critiques recent allegations by Code Pink and other groups that the answer to the titular questions is “yes”:<\/p>\n

\n

But onto the real question: Is Karl Rove a war criminal? The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949<\/a> reads:<\/p>\n

Art. 146. The High Contracting Parties undertake to \tenact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions \tfor persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave \tbreaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article…<\/p>\n

Art.147. Grave breaches to which the preceding \tArticle relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if \tcommitted against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful \tkilling, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological \texperiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body \tor health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of \ta protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the \tforces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of \tthe rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present \tConvention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and \tappropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and \tcarried out unlawfully and wantonly.<\/p>\n

Given that Rove, a political and communications strategist, was in no position to authorize any use of military force, and had no authority to order detention or interrogation policies, it’d seem that he does not in anyway qualify as a war criminal. Looks like these protesters need to get a new line.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are, to put it mildly, a few problems with this analysis.\u00a0 First, the Fourth Geneva Convention isn’t a criminal statute; it is a treaty that obligates states to enact domestic legislation criminalizing the grave breaches in Article 147.\u00a0 Why Swift quotes it instead of either the Rome Statute or federal criminal laws such as the torture statute (18 USC 2340) is beyond me.\u00a0 Second, has Swift never heard of those pesky little things called “theories of liability” or “modes of participation in a crime”?\u00a0 Criminal liability is not limited to those who “order” crimes.\u00a0 One can also instigate crimes, aid-and-abet crimes, conspire to commit crimes, participate in a joint criminal enterprise that involves the commission of crimes, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Has Karl Rove committed an international crime or violated federal criminal law by participating in the US’s detention and interrogation policies?\u00a0 I have no idea.\u00a0 But I do know that we can’t rule out the possibility that Rove is a war criminal by citing the Geneva Conventions and asking whether he ordered the commission of one of its grave breaches.<\/p>\n

Looks like Swift needs a new line, not the protesters.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kevin Jon Heller I love Foreign Policy’s blog, Passport.\u00a0 Along with Democracy Arsenal, it’s one of the two best blogs for analysis of (duh) US foreign policy.\u00a0 Which is why I was shocked to read a recent post by Andrew Swift entitled “Is Karl Rove a War Criminal?”, because Swift’s analysis would make a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}