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Piers Morgan accepts Russia’s war crimes — shame he won’t do the same with America’s

In a conversation with Jeffrey Sachs, Piers Morgan got a brutally honest response on the consequences Russia will face for invading Ukraine:

Morgan wasn’t wrong to speak out against Russia’s actions. However, his criticism masks the double standards of the Western establishment, which conveniently glosses over its own imperial misadventures.

The grim truth

Morgan was speaking to the American economist and analyst Sachs when he asked:

What happens to a country like Russia, which by common consent has committed myriad war crimes in the last three years?

It’s targeted and killed civilians. I think that’s inarguable. It’s kidnapped a reported 20,000 Ukrainian children. There was the massacre at places like Bucha. I’ve been there. Absolutely horrific what went on down there. There have been the sexual assaults and rapes of Ukrainian women and so on. So it seems inarguable. There’s been a number of war crimes committed.

Is it fair and just that at the end of this, assuming you’re right and this is the beginning of the end of this, that Russia emerges unpunished for any of this?

It’s not an unfair question.

The people who order and commit these inhumanities should be held accountable, but this seldom happens, as Sachs explained:

Well, if the United States were punished for all its war crimes, the world would be a better place. And if all countries were punished for their war crimes; if Israel was punished for its genocide before our eyes; if the United States was punished for overthrowing so many regimes and causing so many wars; if the United States were punished for the Iraq war; if the United States were punished for the coup in Iraq, Maidan in February 2014, I’d agree with you.

It would be great if governments were accountable. But what we like to do is say the other side is the wrong one and not to acknowledge our own sins.

For this, Jesus had it right. Why do you always point to the moat in the other eye when you have the plank or the beam in your own eye? To my mind, this is the basic point.

I would love to follow your line, Piers. I agree with it. We should have accountability for all the crimes that are committed. And the United States’ list is so long.

I have been tracking it for more than 40 years professionally. It’s just one war crime after another, including complicity in a genocide in Gaza during the last two years.

War crimes

After WWII, it was possible to hold the Nazis accountable. Germany was completely defeated — ignoring the Nazis who went to work for the Americans, obviously.

Nations like America, Russia, Israel, and the UK, have not been defeated. Therefore, it’s not possible to hold foreign politicians accountable in the same way.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push for accountability or demand an international response to war criminals. Our politics would be in a much better state if Blair and New Labour had been punished for invading Iraq on unfounded claims. And it goes without saying, that everyone should support the International Criminal Court’s attempts to hold Israel responsible for the genocide.

The problem is that the mechanisms for justice and accountability are limited to waging war — which rarely works out … or sanctions — both of which make things worse.

Morgan isn’t wrong about Russia’s crimes. The issue is that he’s selectively correct. You won’t hear mainstream journalists like him arguing that Western nations should face accountability, and that’s a massive problem.

Featured image via Piers Morgan Uncensored

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.