President Biden is, as we would expect, completely preoccupied with the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Though the wars are not the same — one is for conquest, the other for genocide — they have one horrible common factor: the mass of war crimes committed by the aggressors.
While Biden is letting the dictators, despots, and terrorists call the tune, two other huge issues arise.
First, with the U.S. so distracted, will Xi Jinping use the opportunity to strike Taiwan?
Second, why aren’t Biden and his team shouting to the rafters that Russia’s invasion and subsequent carnage should be punished as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions?
We have been warned by a few of Biden’s military leadership that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would likely take place before 2027. Adm. Philip Davidson, then the retiring commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said as much in March 2021. As I have written here and elsewhere, I believe China will attack Taiwan before 2025 while we are entirely absorbed in the 2024 election. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Israel’s Three Big Problems)
What is going on now may be too much of an opportunity for Xi to pass up. The U.S. is entirely engaged with the Ukraine and Israel wars. Our arsenal of weapons and munitions is being drained to supply Ukraine and Israel. The media’s and public’s focus on the election is second only to the Hamas-Israel war and that will soon reverse itself. Republican self-immolation in the House and Donald Trump’s trials compete for press attention.
Relying on the International Court of Justice, the Israelis know, would be a huge mistake.
In short, we’re comprehensively distracted, our military will soon be overstretched and our allies — aside from Japan and Australia — don’t want to get involved in a conflict over Taiwan. French President Macron said as much in April.
The only question is whether Xi and his cabinet believe they are ready to take Taiwan by force.
We used to have a multi-front strategy for global conflicts. We planned to fight in three theaters — Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East — winning in one while holding off defeat in the other two in an attempt to win all three. Today, our forces aren’t capable of mounting two — far less three — military actions at once.
If Xi chose today to launch an attack on Taiwan, we could help the Taiwanese fight, but our Navy and Air Force are clearly incapable of supplying Israel and Ukraine and fighting a war over Taiwan at the same time.
Xi may not believe he’s ready to attack Taiwan but today’s circumstances may convince him to act.
As the Heritage Foundation (not a bunch of alarmists) wrote in its October 18 assessment of the U.S. military, “It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were.”
That assessment can’t change while Biden is president. It will take years for another president to repair too many years of poor planning, lack of investment, and neglect. The terrorist wars now going on in Israel and Ukraine should be a wake-up call for Republicans, but House Republicans are too wrapped up in themselves to notice.
The other issue is the war crimes that have been and are being committed in Israel and Ukraine. Let’s set aside the idiocy of the Democrats’ Hamas Caucus — AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to mention a few — because they want to blame Israel for the war crimes being committed by Hamas. (READ MORE: The War in Ukraine Is No Game of Drones)
Terrorism is, by definition, acts of violence or the threat of such acts against civilians for a political purpose. Terrorist groups — such as Hamas, Hizballah, and the rest — aren’t signatories to the Geneva Conventions but they — theoretically — can still be held accountable under them under the 1998 Rome Statute.
The 1998 Rome Statute created the International Criminal Court which supposedly has universal jurisdiction. But the ICJ has too many third-world judges and its prosecutions are totally politicized. It is incapable of indicting, arresting or bringing to trial any of the terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 attacks and the subsequent act of terror by Hamas.
Biden should tell our intelligence agencies to identify as many of the Russian war criminals as possible.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions contain a special convention for the protection of civilians in time of war.
Article 3 of that convention provides that non-combatants must be treated humanely. Murder, torture, the taking of hostages, and offenses such as rape are prohibited. Those acts are war crimes.
For twenty months, the Russians have been committing atrocities in Ukraine that amount to war crimes. Hamas has comprehensively engaged in all of the offenses outlined in that Convention.
Russia has bombed schools, hospitals and individuals’ homes in Ukraine, causing hundreds or thousands of deaths. Hamas has raped Israeli women, tortured many people, and has burned families in their homes. As I wrote last week, Hamas murdered about forty children and babies in the town of K’far Azar.
Lt. Gen. David Deptula (USAF, Ret.) has been one of the smartest folks in our military for a long time. He’s been raising the question of punishing war crimes for a few weeks now, and people are paying too little attention to what he’s been saying. As Gen. Deptula has said,
It’s important to understand that Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields is … illegal in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, as well as the laws of armed conflict, and they fall into the category of war crimes.
He added:
At the same time, it’s important to note that even if Hamas uses human shields, Israel is still bound by the principle of proportionality in exercising all these precautions to minimize harm to civilians. They have a very strong history of doing that. But that does not mean that they cannot strike targets because of the presence of those human shields.
Biden Wednesday attempted to convince Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to not launch a ground strike into Gaza. He said that Israel should not let its rage over the Hamas attacks rule its response. Why would any American president try to protect Hamas?
The Israelis are very good at protecting civilians, as they are trying to do now. They have ordered civilians away from the northern parts of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is reportedly bombing some who try to flee.
And the Israelis are very good at punishing those who have committed atrocities against them.
In the 1972 Olympic massacre eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by (surprised, surprise) Palestinian terrorists. Then Israeli-Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the formation of a joint intelligence-special operations team to hunt down the killers. Over the following few years, that group managed to kill them all. (READ MORE: Palestinians Cheered 9/11)
Relying on the International Court of Justice, the Israelis know, would be a huge mistake. Thus, they have created the “Nili” unit within their Shin Bet internal security service and charged it with killing all the planners of and participants in the Hamas October 7 attacks. It will take years to track them down and kill them, but they are all dead men walking.
Biden should tell our intelligence agencies to identify as many of the Russian war criminals as possible and seek to have them prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions. He should also order them to help the Israelis find the perpetrators and planners of the October 7 attacks. The Israelis will take care of the rest.