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[Baffler]

It makes perfect sense. At the end of that article it mentions that:

The latest version of the draft resolution recognises the work of the informal expert group on women, peace and security, but Patten had argued that the current system does not provide a consistent channel to bring violations on sexual violence to the attention of the security council.

A formal mechanism, with a panel regularly assessing compliance and recommending sanctions, would have given her more leverage on states and non-state groups.

Whatever the US government's reason to turn this down, I'm happy that they did. If it becomes clear that some belligerent in a conflict is in fact using rape as a weapon of war, meaning at scale and either sanctioned or ordered by their commanders, there's no need for a formal mechanism for UN member states to consider sanctions against them. And if it isn't being used as a reprisal, and is just a crime being committed by individual soldiers, that's something that should be dealt with by that country's military justice system. The UN doesn't need this power, and it couldn't use it responsibly if it gets it anyway. It's just another mechanism for setting up beltway elites, and their foreign equivalents, with cushy bureaucratic jobs that let them feel like they're saving the world. It also sounds like not providing """""family planning""""" services would be cause for this committee to (at least consider) recommending censure against you. Why should states where abortion isn't even legal be expected to contribute to that kind of effort? Why should they tolerate the UN pushing it on them? That "progressive normative framework" the anonymous diplomat moans about losing is no loss at all, I think.

[Kagus]

Anyway, I'm glad that we supported it in the end. Not surprised that Trump's folks flipped out at the possibility of supporting abortion. Very glad that we now have rules in place for prosecuting rape as a war crime.

Except that it's a little bit more fun than that. In 2013, the UN security council already accepted a resolution that 1) States that sexual violence constitutes a war crime and 2) Calls for providing social and medical help for survivors of said sexual violence.

This latest resolution aimed to strengthen and expand that previous resolution (near as I can tell), and the US objected to the wording in the draft. Normally, when there's major contention, the UN goes back to a previously agreed-upon resolution, which in this case would be the one from 2013. Except that the US said that they wouldn't accept that language either, and thereby forced through a new resolution that removes the call for providing medical support.

So this latest resolution has actually only gone backwards, because everyone else was trying to go forwards from a resolution that Obama's administration had agreed to.

[Dunamisdeos]

Backwards in what regard, though? I doubt that the new one is literally the old one but with potential references to abortion removed. The new one must include some manner of expanded protections or avenues of prosecution that provide increased chances of bringing perpetrators to justice.

If it came down to Trump trying to alter previous resolutions as a result of this attempt, they would have simply taken it off the table and reverted to the actual previous form, and let Trump try to propose an alteration himself. New one has to have some benefit for them to put him with his chicanery. You can look up UN resolutions on their website, but for the life of me i can't find this specific one.

[Baffler]

Backwards in what regard, though? I doubt that the new one is literally the old one but with potential references to abortion removed. The new one must include some manner of expanded protections or avenues of prosecution that provide increased chances of bringing perpetrators to justice.

If it came down to Trump trying to alter previous resolutions as a result of this attempt, they would have simply taken it off the table and reverted to the actual previous form, and let Trump try to propose an alteration himself. New one has to have some benefit for them to put him with his chicanery. You can look up UN resolutions on their website, but for the life of me i can't find this specific one.

Edit: Nope. This is the only mention their website seems to have of it. It might be one of the documents at the bottom of the page.
https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2019-04/women-peace-and-security.php

[Kagus]

What you're looking for is this:
https://undocs.org/S/RES/2467(2019)

Which, at the time of this post, is a page that hasn't been populated yet. The final document hasn't been publicly uploaded as of now.


EDIT: Edited for URL functionality (goddamn parentheses...)

EDIT2:

Edit: Nope. This is the only mention their website seems to have of it. It might be one of the documents at the bottom of the page.
https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2019-04/women-peace-and-security.php

Resolution 2106 is the previously-accepted document from 2013 that was being referenced. 2467 is the new one that has just now been agreed upon.

[Starver]

So not having parking available isn't any sort of harm to the community? Cool. Suggest in a town meeting that as lack of parking is not a problem, the city should replace the city parking spaces with trees or something. And name the bill (whatever a local-level suggested ordinance is called) after the idiot who sued for the chalk.

Reminds me of the Old Lady Job Justification Hearings (That Mitchell & Webb Sound radio show, generally using Old Lady logic to show the futility of a given mode of employment) when they covered that subject. - NB, seemingly quite bad recording/conversion rate on that, which is probably best preceded by hearing some of the earlier skits in the series, but you can get the gist.

[Dunamisdeos]

Makes me feel better about not being able to find it, at least.

Welp, here's to a better tomorrow. Maybe this one will be an improvement. Logically, it should be, but [enters loop about why the hell this wasn't a thing before now].

[Madman198237]

If I am not mistaken (and I may VERY much be mistaken, as I've got lots of stuff to do and no time to go digging right now to double-check this), rape as a weapon of war/military procedure during a conflict is technically already considered an international crime by the same UN treaty that defined "genocide".

Of course, given how toothless that treaty has turned out to be, I would advise not getting too worked up about the latest resolution. It's not fixing anything, and even if it was it would likely not be of much use.

[Trekkin]

Makes me feel better about not being able to find it, at least.

Welp, here's to a better tomorrow. Maybe this one will be an improvement. Logically, it should be, but [enters loop about why the hell this wasn't a thing before now].

Partly because there's entrenched resistance to recognizing the darker side of einheit. Soldiers are not automata doing only exactly what they have been directly ordered to do, and if our goal is to reduce the rates of sexual violence, at some point we have to ask what role the culture and mores of the institution are playing in facilitating it -- particularly since crimes about power interact nontrivially with power dynamics as absolute as these.

In the conservative mind, though, with its love of direct causation, no such grey area exists; every military rape is either an order or an aberration, and soldiers are either paragons of virtue or not true scotsmen soldiers. (This dovetails nicely with their crypto-stratocracy, as well.) The idea that their holiest of holies might be permitting or even encouraging anything immoral is a thought fit only for civilians and traitors (but I repeat myself, ha ha.), and so efforts to more comprehensively handle sexual violence can only present them with unpleasant (and therefore fake) facts.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean, non-conservatives do that too. They even do it with sexual issues, as seen with recent reactions to various Democratic politicians' sexual allegations. We had people in here arguing that we should outright ignore those allegations because we could lose political capital.
 
I think human beings have a tendency to pointedly ignore the flaws/misdeeds of anyone or anything they venerate or respect. We just have different methods of justifying ourselves. Best to be aware of that in one's self rather than accusatory of others. I'm placing myself as an example, there, by the way. As a Christian in 2019 I've needed to be heavily aware of that particular human failing. I mean really now, it's not like liberal-leaning Presidents during wartime have been more likely to charge their soldiers with individual war crimes.

[Frumple]

I mean really now, it's not like liberal-leaning Presidents during wartime have been more likely to charge their soldiers with individual war crimes.

... have you actually seen numbers on that? Out of it enough at the mo' I really don't feel like trying to massage google into giving them up, so if you got sources on hand that'd be neat.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean really now, it's not like liberal-leaning Presidents during wartime have been more likely to charge their soldiers with individual war crimes.

... have you actually seen numbers on that? Out of it enough at the mo' I really don't feel like trying to massage google into giving them up, so if you got sources on hand that'd be neat.

I feel like we have a near-zero ratio of trying individual soldiers for war crimes/war crimes reported in America, therefore if any particular party has an edge it's going to be inconclusive. Like FDR was the head honcho in WW2, you can probably find lots of stories about our soldiers there due to the sheer relative volume abroad, but that doesn't mean Democrats are worse at this. etc.

But hey, you know what? You're right. I'll do some actual looking up of things and we'll see if I have to eat my words. Feel free to post your own results as well, anyone.

[Dunamisdeos]

First site, wikipedia. Results not promising. There are eight PEOPLE on this list, not necessarily even soldiers.

Quick after-note: I didn't even have to go past Wikipedia.

----

1) Robert Bales was sentenced to Life without Parole for a massacre in Afghanistan. This was under President Nixon. This is the ONLY instance I found of a soldier being tried and convicted for actual war crimes rather than being given, say, a discharge.

2) Roosevelt was President when Jacob A. Smith ordered US troops to kill every male in the immediate area over 10 in the Philippines. Was not tried for war crimes. Perjured himself in front of a court martial. Was made to retire peacefully. Never tried for War Crimes.

3) There are a goddam slew of war crimes witnessed during WW2. These include rape (Okinawa being the most well-known, IMO), firing upon civilian vessels, the list goes on. Both Roosevelt and Truman were President in 1945, when the invasion of Okinawa began. Notable excerpts:

Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have intentionally kept the rape [In Okinawa] a secret, largely out of shame: "It would be unfair for the public to get the impression that we were all a bunch of rapists after we worked so hard to serve our country."

In the Laconia massacre, U.S. aircraft attacked Germans rescuing survivors from the sinking British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. Pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast its remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.

Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.

4) There are similar piles of reports for the Vietnam War. My Lai seems the biggest incident, which involved women and children and numerous horrific acts. This would have been, primarily, Nixon's Presidency.

----

CONCLUSION AFTER SOME VERY CURSORY RESEARCH: I mean there are A LOT OF INSTANCES of very, very clear war crimes committed by specific, known individuals both under and not under orders from their superiors, across multiple party lines (I found data going as far back as the Whigs) that were simply ignored in the USA. There's enough here just on wikipedia that I could do this literally all day long. There's basically one or more for every major or minor conflict the US has ever been involved in. You'll find plenty of instances where they are convicted in connection with war crimes or some such and given, eh a couple years or a dishonorable discharge.

[smjjames]

Although the wiki page for war crimes does mention an example in the 15th century, the whole idea of war crimes didn't really go mainstream or something until WWI. The fact that the world hegenemon doesn't want to be held accountable by the rest of the world isn't surprising.

[sluissa]

1) Robert Bales was sentenced to Life without Parole for a massacre in Afghanistan. This was under President Nixon. This is the ONLY instance I found of a soldier being tried and convicted for actual war crimes rather than being given, say, a discharge.

Minor note. Robert Bales would have been about 1 year old when Nixon left office. Relevant events all occurred under the Obama admin.