In my long time on this planet, I have borne witness to a lot of evil. However, at least in my memory, the more egregious nefarious acts people perpetrate on their fellow humans used to be somewhat sporadic in nature. In between wars and insurrections, there were troughs of civility. Either that or I am romanticizing a past that never really existed.
Today, thanks to the ubiquitous, near-instant coverage of world events, we have windows on a world that seems increasingly ugly, ungoverned by the rules that used to cast at least a veneer of civilization over our inhumanity. If someone, be they individuals or countries, did something wrong, there was an accounting. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Take the following, murders openly committed by Israeli border police:
The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement admitting two men were shot during a joint IDF operation with the Israeli border police around Jenin. It said the shooting “is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies”.
Even in conflict, the execution of unarmed prisoners is a war crime.
The increasingly toothless UN human rights office offered its condemnation:
“We’re appalled by the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in yet another apparent summary execution,” said the UN human rights office spokesperson, Jeremy Laurence.
“The execution documented today is the result of an accelerated process of dehumanisation of Palestinians and the complete abandonment of their lives by the Israeli regime,” said Yuli Novak, the executive director of the B’Tselem human rights group. “In Israel, there is no mechanism that acts to stop the killing of Palestinians or is capable of prosecuting those responsible.”
Anyone who regularly follows the actions of Israeli forces knows that the above is not an isolated event but rather part of a much larger pattern of abuse, violence and murder perpetrated against Palestinians. Sadly, however, the Jewish state has no monopoly on that market.
One thinks immediately of the murders perpetrated by the U.S. against alleged drug smugglers.
US strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean have been under way for months, along with a US military buildup in the region, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.
They have carried out at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, killing at least 83 people.
The president told military service members this week that the US would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
Something tells me that the targeting of Venezuela, and the executions of people in boats allegedly ferrying drugs has little to do with interdicting cocaine supplies and more to do with regime change, given that Trump doesn't like President Maduro. And perhaps the even greater evil here is that Congress has surrendered its legislative monopoly on declaring war to their mad king.
Strangely, but not surprisingly, this apparent Trumpian passion against pushers has sharp limits. How else can one explain this?
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.
Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking.
It seems pointless to try to plumb some logic from this bizarre pardon, yet it is, once again, an example of the disappearance of even a semblance of morality in a world ruled by the morally insane and all who support them.
