{"id":873,"date":"2015-08-30T23:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T23:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=873"},"modified":"2015-09-05T21:34:10","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T21:34:10","slug":"dont-expect-world-peace-if-war-criminals-are-not-punished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/08\/dont-expect-world-peace-if-war-criminals-are-not-punished.html","title":{"rendered":"Don’t expect world peace if war criminals are not punished"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/i>Douter de tout ou tout croire, ce sont deux solutions \u00e9galement commodes, qui l’une et l’autre nous dispensent de r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir.<\/em><\/p>\n

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.<\/p>\n

Henri Poincar\u00e9<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The current violence plaguing Iraq and by extension, Syria, is\u00a0the result of war crimes perpetrated by a group of men who have still not been punished. The sense of dishonor caused by a lack\u00a0of punishment given to these war criminals stimulates continuing violence and extremism in the world.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Image via\u00a0Andy Worthington<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Any sane Muslim – any sane human being for that matter – would feel a great deal of anger towards Tony Blair and George W. Bush, and those\u00a0other\u00a0top officials who were in power during the Iraq War. It is this anger, this sense of dishonor, that extremists try to hijack to draw recruits to their cause. So the cause of the rise of ISIS is not – as the warmongers try to argue – the survival of something like the\u00a0Syrian government but rather the survival of those same\u00a0war criminals who invaded Iraq in 2003 and earned global condemnation and ridicule.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tony Blair, a war criminal conspirator who helped lead the aggression against Iraq in 2003 and spread the lies that were used to justify the war, is in the news again warning against such threats to his life as ISIS and Jeremy Corbyn (but not the millions who survived his crimes, who surely still\u00a0want\u00a0him to be punished).<\/p>\n

To learn that\u00a0Tony Blair of all people would try to lecture the world about the danger\u00a0of ISIS and blame a lack of US-led\u00a0bombing in the region (e.g. against the government of Syria)\u00a0is horrifying because there are actually people who would listen to this so-called man, whose wickedness and blindness is without parallel. Few men are more responsible for the rise of the ISIS terrorist group than that criminal, and the fact this bloody\u00a0criminal is not yet dead is likely a major motivation\u00a0for why people join the extremist group even today.<\/p>\n

The inability of the United Nations, or the administration of Barack Obama, to prosecute the criminal conspirators who led the illegal Iraq War is a disgrace to them, especially because the United Nations condemned the war and the Obama administration likewise condemned the war, admitting that it was much\u00a0to blame for the rise of ISIS. Worse is the attitude of forgiveness towards the blatant aggression and lies of 2003, with the new Bush presidential candidate Jeb Bush (for obvious family reasons) trying to claim\u00a0that “we” somehow only learned that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) after the US had attacked\u00a0Iraq. According to him, the war was an innocent mistake based on legitimate fears about the regime in Iraq. In reality, the conspirators knew\u00a0Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaeda terrorists, and the Bush administration knowingly lied to justify the War\u00a0in\u00a0Iraq. Dick Cheney in particular made statements that he knew full well to be false, when he\u00a0broadcast lies about Saddam Hussein’s regime meeting with\u00a0al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n