Nikki the Numbskull

Leading the Parade of Fools Cheering on Holocaust 2.0

“Aspen Girls” © Paul Randall Photography

We live in remarkable times. Years of history taking its normal course are crammed into months or even weeks. After decades of the shiny, fancy Cadillac that is the neoliberal/neo-con imperial world order puttering along smoothly, even after rattling bumps like the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, suddenly it is not only misfiring, it sounds like it is about to throw a rod, and has more pieces falling off than a Boeing airliner.

In this terrifying and exciting soup of accelerated change, satire, irony, and black humor feast upon all the contradictions, desperation, and general stupidity of a dying, flailing Empire. Among the ripest targets are the neo-con wreckers I call the Imperial End Timers; those ever wrong swamp creatures that somehow keep popping up in positions of power, to continue to promote even the most pitiful and desperate efforts to cling to every vestige of imperial power that remains.

And no neo-con creature does pitifully and desperately wrong more readily than Nikki Haley. Nor is more comically dim in their timing and clumsy messaging.

With her political back to the wall, mainly due to another clumsy move in opposing natural ally Trump, she chose to run off to an increasingly pariah state to provide the exemplar of what not to do when confronted with Holocaust 2.0

She told a country now under multiple provisional genocide rulings from the ICJ, the HAGUE, to “finish them.” By writing it on a bomb. And before and since, she has again and again been possibly the most extreme backer of the Apartheid State in US politics (which is saying something, as the expression goes) throughout its bloodbath in Gaza, from again telling them to “finish them” the day after 10/7, to recently arguing against a ceasefire in an op-ed that sounds like it was written by ICC indicted war criminal Netanyahu.

And beyond spitting in the face of a looming sledgehammer ICJ genocide ruling, never has embracing Israel looked like a worse bet. They are losing badly in Gaza militarily, and will obviously lose any conflict with much bigger and better equipped foes, like Hezbollah or Iran. Their facade of military competence, let alone superiority, has shattered along with much of their long maintained protective narrative in the West.

But putting aside the public relations wisdom of backing a wobbly, far right extremist driven government getting thumped on every front in Gaza, her little rah-rah tour, along with other parts of her extreme pro-Israel posturing since 10/7, is likely literally criminal. On multiple counts.

The Genocide Convention of 1948 is broad, as would be expected of an effort to definitively end the possibility of another Holocaust, and as the first human rights’ convention passed by the United Nations General Assembly. “Never again” is clearly the underlying tone of the document- and not only the direct perpetrators of genocide are in the crosshairs. Three of the five punishable acts in Article III of the Convention are those of enablers of genocide as much as those actually committing it: (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.

Haley has managed to cover all three, multiple times in multiple ways, sometimes so thoroughly you can’t be sure which war crime to assign it to.

Is signing an artillery shell with “Finish them” direct and public incitement, or complicity, as a morale boost to the artillerymen? And how about her 10/8 “Finish them”? One could argue that one is some sort of genocide crime full house, hitting all three, as the genocide (at least its most recent iteration) had barely commenced.

And undoubtedly an investigator can find many other acts by Haley since 10/7 that would at least flirt with any three of those punishable acts. One wonders if she knows that these aspects of the Genocide Convention even exist, or that the previous provisional rulings by the ICJ against Israel each emphatically restate the universal responsibility of all states and individuals to prevent the crimes of genocide.

Does she realize that these rulings have also directly ordered Israel to cease these crimes, orders that they not only clearly ignored, but openly mocked? With the massive, massive piles of evidence, much of it blithely provided by Israeli soldiers themselves through social media, combined with direct acts in contradiction of previous ICJ orders, does she not understand that the chances of an ICJ Genocide Convention conviction is extremely likely, and probably in record time (for the ICJ)?

At which point she will have on her record multiple instances of cheering on, defending, and advocating for genocide. Full on, whole enchilada, Hague recognized genocide, one including mass deaths of thirteen thousand plus children, brutal maiming and torture of detainees, clearly intentional famine, along with, I am sure, a litany of other crimes that will be exposed. The lack of comprehension of how bad that will look amazes me.

But she is far, far from alone in American politics in refusing to get out of the Zionist foxhole, even as a tank labeled ICJ slowly bears down on them. If anything, blindly stupid loyalty to the Apartheid State has been most glaring among the American (and Western in general) political class, now wildly out of whack with general Western public opinion towards what most now see as a brutal genocide.

Some, like Haley, take their genocidal cheerleading to blatantly sociopathic levels, as if they are daring the ICJ to take note. Among these is Lindsey Graham, a death chipmunk to match Caitlin Johnstone’s genocide walrus. Not content with promoting one disastrous, pointless bloodbath in Ukraine, or supporting standard issue destruction in Gaza, this chittering, likely rabid creature cleverly (in his mind) rhetorically climbed to the top of the bullshit narrative heap by suggesting nukes.

With literally a handful of exceptions, the entire Republican congressional delegation is barely less extreme than Haley or Graham. Shockingly, the Democratic congressional delegation is barely better, with many members easily matching the intensity and dogmatic loyalty of the most extreme Republicans. As a result, an indicted war criminal has been invited to promote his genocide to an adoring, rapt audience. Again, the stupid is astounding, with every individual attending and cheering appearing to be liable under Article III, either direct and public incitement to commit genocide and/or complicity in genocide. It is like going out of your way to sign a document endorsing another’s brutal crime. And like that situation, even if your acts aren’t actually criminal, they still look awful, and can never be erased or effectively explained away. Get ready to spend the rest of your life answering, “What were you thinking?”

And the sick willingness to run cover for the Apartheid State in the American political class is far from limited to Congress. Up and down the roster, leaders past and present, most have been unflinching in their continued stick in the mud backing of Israel, even if a few meaningless statements of sympathy for the Palestinians have been included.

Hillary Clinton, the turd in the US political toilet bowl that just won’t flush, again bobbed up to provide her utterly unwelcome opinion, in this case to fervently argue against a stop to the bloodshed. Exhorting on an ICJ recognized genocide. Meanwhile, calling students protesting said genocide idiots.

And when it comes to fanatical, undoubtedly criminal backing of Nutty-yahoo and company that truly, literally directly assists in the genocide, none can match the administration’s shadow creatures Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, as well as the mumbling figurehead himself, Joe Biden. If you want to line up some complicity and conspiracy cases, each of them have run interference for the slaughter as hard and long as reasonably possible. They have directly circumvented US government mechanisms that would have mitigated said slaughter. They have run diplomatic cover for the Apartheid State at the UN and elsewhere, have effectively been negotiating on its behalf with Hamas, and have endlessly parroted political talking points about setting no limits or redlines on their behavior.

And most importantly, they have continued to pump weapons into a genocidal bloodbath, a crime of massive proportions flagged by the highest criminal court on the planet, not just once, but multiple times. I have argued from the moment the Senator from Credit Card ran to Israel to hand them a blank check the day after, the entire American operation in relation to Gaza has been purely cover and support. Privately, they really don’t put any limits on their behavior.

So sure, Nikki may be liable for her rhetorical support, perhaps the ICJ one day may come calling. But if we are looking for the truly complicit, the conspirators, the criminals directly assisting, and enabling, the genocide, look no further than the real powers of the administration- Blinken, Sullivan- who continue to hand them the killing devices to do it with.

May their day in the dock come. With the speed at which the world is changing, don’t bet against it.