Petraeus should be sent to The Hague over his Syrian proposal: Journalist

Former CIA director David Petraeus must be dragged to the International Court of Justice in The Hague over his proposal that the US should establish safe havens inside Syria for terrorists, an American political commentator and journalist says.   

Petraeus, appearing before a congressional panel on Wednesday in his first public testimony since resigning as the CIA director in 2012, said the United States should set up safe havens inside Syria where US-allied militants could freely operate and additional forces could be trained under the protection of American and allied air power.

In an interview with Press TV on Wednesday, Don DeBar said, “While Petraeus talks about setting up safe havens we have to look back to his own history to see how skilled he is on that particular subject.”

“Apparently, he couldn’t even create a safe haven around Paula Broadwell from his wife, so I don’t know exactly that he is the strategist [you] would want to be making policy for you,” DeBar said, referring to Petraeus’ extramarital affair with his mistress and biographer Broadwell that ended his career as the director of the CIA.

“But more importantly, and within the context of international law, what he is advocating doing in essence and in fact and at law is conquering Syrian territory and exercising jurisdiction over it so that the activities that the United States would like to have go on inside that territory, adverse to the legitimate government of Syria, the one that holds the seat of the United Nations, the one that was elected by the Syrian people, the one that public opinion polls show still holds - in fact, holds stronger - support now than it did before the US started the attack on that country back in February of 2011,” the analyst stated.

“So what he is advocating is a violation of international law, war crimes, the crime of conquest. And he should actually, if he is doing this attempting influence the government, he should be dragged to The Hague,” DeBar concluded.

Petraeus, the former top military commander in charge of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the progress achieved so far in the war against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group has been “inadequate.”

He said “some elements of the right strategy are in place” while others are under-resourced or missing.

Petraeus recommended that the United States take a harsher stance against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. More than 230,000 people have reportedly been killed and millions displaced due to the violence mainly fueled by the foreign-sponsored militants.

The United States and its regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - have been supporting the militants operating inside Syria since the beginning of the crisis.

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