ChristopherWhite.info/blog

I’ve been trying my utmost not to swear on this blog — at least not regularly. But it’s taking every iota of restraint not to resort to likening Neil Clark to a moist part of the female anatomy.

This vicious piece he’s written for Comment Is Free can be summed up as: “We should let Iraqis who have worked with the British Army be killed when we leave, because they deserve it.”

Scumbag.

CIF perhaps unsurprisingly turned off comments on that post after three hours rather than the usual three days, but it was still enough time for some great responses, like this from Daniel Davies:

Every bone in my body wants to bluntly invite Neil to consider the implications of his implied policy - that the most violent and nationalistic element of society should be given free reign to dish out rough justice to people they regard as traitors - for the long term survival of his own political party. But I think that would probably be crossing a line in terms of the talk policy so I’ll just note that there is an inconsistency here.

Let’s be clear here, expanding on Conor’s point above. There is a clear duty of any occupying power to ensure security for the population under occupation. It’s in the Geneva Convention. To intentionally abandon people who you expect to be killed by deaths squads is by that token a war crime. That’s why the official policy of the UK government is not to commit this war crime but to instead offer silly and insufficiently generous asylum slots. That’s bad enough.

Neil Clark, on the other hand, is actually saying that the war crime is the correct thing to do. That’s crazy. How can it possibly be part of any sensible anti-war position to say that an occupying force has no obligation to stop people being murdered? And why would anyone, even if they did regard the Iraqi insurgency as “true heroes”, think that this true heroism was best expressed by murdering whole families? Translators, cooks and mechanics simply aren’t “quislings” and no sane resistance movement has ever acted as if they were.

And this from the ever-wise Conor Foley:

Since Clark rests part of his incitement to murder on international law (and clearly the terms in which he has described these civilian staff as ‘legitimate targets’ does constitute such an incitment), it is worth explaining one point here.

There is an overwelming consensus that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. However, the notion that people ‘collaborating with the occupation’ are war criminals is rubbish. On the contrary, the statute of the International Criminal Court, which is largely based on the Geneva Conventions, specifically states that what Clark is advocating is a war crime. You can find the link here:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/about.html

It is worth reading Article 8 on war crimes. Amongst the crimes that it lists are:

‘Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities’.

The second half of that sentence was specifically written to protect those whom Clark calls ‘collaborators’. He goes on to argue against a basic principle of human rights law (enshrined in the UN Convention against Torture, the Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights) that people fleeing persecution should be denied sanctuary in Britain, so we can assume that his commitment to international law is fairly selective.

What is more interesting is whether or not this article, through its clear incitment to people to commit war crimes (his repeated refusal to distinguish between military combatants and civilians), would actually make Clark himself liable to criminal prosecution. The Rwanda radio case springs to mind and war crimes have universal jurisdiction. I think that the police and attorney general might want to have a word here.

I hope that you have a sleepless night Clark. This article brought back some very painful memories for me.

( And I really hope — though doubt — that the “SimonJ” who had a comment deleted by the moderators is the Guardian’s own Mr Jenkins.)

Yet it’s heartening, particularly given my previous post, that the best part of 200 commenters all agree that Clark is a complete twat. Damn. Knew I wouldn’t be able to keep that up.

Dan Hardie has the lastest update on MPs’ responses here, and there is a rather clever video by Tim Ireland here.

UPDATE 12/8/07

To clarify, I do not myself think Neil Clark should go to prison. I do however think he’s a world-class turd.

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