Kadafi and the burning of Atlanta

It was announced that Prosecutors have asked the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Moammar Kadafi, his son and brother-in-law.  It struck me, when has it become an "international" crime to put down an internal rebellion?  (Ignore that it is only a crime in states that have oil.)  Also, just who wrote this so-called international law?  I can't recall voting for legislators to write such a law.




Atlanta, Georgia after Union troops passed through

 France, the United Kingdom and the United States are the leaders in an unconstitutional attack on a peaceful oil producing nation trying to put down an internal rebellion.  The rights and wrongs of the different sides and tribal problems in Libya are not the issue.

The Western nations attacking Libya for daring to put down a rebellion have very short memories.

UNITED STATES:  The Union government of Abraham Lincoln had no problem killing any rebels they came in contact with.  Some 260,000 Southerners lost their lives and another 137,000 were wounded.  Cities and towns were burned to the ground (See photo of Atlanta).  Union "irregulars" roamed the countryside killing rebels and burning rebel homes and farms.

FRANCE:  The eight year rebellion in Algeria against France resulted in about 1,000,000 deaths.  The French military command ruthlessly applied the principle of collective responsibility to villages suspected of sheltering, supplying, or in any way cooperating with the guerrillas. Rebels that fled to caves or other remote hiding places were tracked and hunted down. In one episode, rebels who refused to surrender and withdraw from a cave complex were dealt with by French Foreign Legion Pioneer troops, who, lacking flamethrowers or explosives, simply bricked up each cave, leaving the residents to die of suffocation.

British concentration camps starved to death

women and children in the Boer War

UNITED KINGDOM:   The British had to put down rebellion in diamond and gold rich South Africa.  The British implemented a Scorched Earth policy under which they targeted everything that could give sustenance to the Boer guerrillas with a view to making it harder for the Boers to survive. As British troops swept the countryside, they systematically destroyed crops, burned homesteads and farms, poisoned wells, and interned Boer and African women, children and workers in concentration camps.  Some 27,927 Boer women and children died in the camps.

It appears that it is fine for Western nations to put down rebellions, but not for oil producing states.