In the wake of accusations of Russian troops killing civilians in Ukraine, the U.S. capitalist-imperialist ruling class and the media that channels their interests are weaponizing (literally and figuratively) those reports. They aim to mobilize public opinion behind further moves to isolate Russia and escalate the war in Ukraine, with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity (see On the Dangerous, Reckless and Unconscionable Drumbeat for a “No-Fly Zone” in Ukraine).

First fact: in the department of war crimes, no force in history has perpetrated anywhere near as many as the rulers of the U.S. And no force in history can beat the belligerence of the rulers of the U.S. in applying one standard of war crimes to their rivals, while doing or enabling the exact same thing themselves. They’re doing that right now by arming and enabling war crimes in Yemen by their allies in the Middle East.

But in addition to the obscene hypocrisy involved in the U.S. calling anyone war criminals, this country is literally built on crimes against humanity routinely justified with false pretenses.

Hyperbole?

• In their founding document, the rulers of this country justified the genocidal mass murder of the Native Americans and theft of their land by accusing the Native peoples of being war criminals! Their Declaration of Independence called the people they were massacring “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
• Accusations of rape (or even just "improper" words or touching) were repeatedly invoked to incite and justify the gruesome public lynching of thousands of Black people and to instigate racist mass murder of Black people.

When the rulers of the U.S. charge other countries with “war crimes,” they do so to advance their interests as global oppressors and exploiters and often to prepare to carry out war crimes:

• “Remember the Maine.” The U.S. battleship Maine blew up on February 15, 1898 in Havana harbor—when Cuba was still one of Spain’s colonies. There was never any evidence that Spanish forces were involved in this explosion, but this did not stop the pro-war forces in the U.S. ruling class from publishing front-page drawings “showing” how the Spanish forces had attached mines to the bottom of the ship. Shouting “Remember the Maine!” the U.S. government rushed into a war to snatch an empire from Spain, seizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
• The “Gulf of Tonkin Incident.” On August 4, 1964, the U.S. claimed—without any real evidence—that North Vietnam had launched two unprovoked attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. In fact, the CIA was attacking North Vietnamese coastal installations, so any confrontation that happened would have been provoked by the U.S., and the second “incident” never took place. In “response” to these invented “incidents,” the U.S. Congress passed the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” which authorized the massive deployment of U.S. troops into southern Vietnam. It was the start of the extreme escalation of warfare that led to the deaths of millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
• “The Kuwait Incubators.” In 1990, as the U.S. was gearing up for the first Gulf War—President George Bush (I)’s invasion of Iraq—the news was inundated with false “testimony” of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti, claiming she witnessed Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of incubators at a hospital in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. Bush (I) retold the story in a speech in January 1991, shortly before he launched the bombings on Iraq. This lie served to justify a war that killed 200,000 Iraqis.
• Non-Existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” In 2001, Vice President Cheney pushed the CIA to produce false reports that Iraq had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to Al Qaeda. Justified by the WMD lies, the U.S. launched a blitzkrieg-like invasion of Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and wounded in the invasion, and the U.S. occupation that followed has been even worse. Iraq Body Count documented between 168,239 and 187,378 civilian deaths from violence, and total violent deaths including combatants at 251,000 from 2003 through September 2016.

When the rulers of this country highly selectively, and with an unmatched record of fabricating incidents, charge “war crimes,” what they mean is: get ready for us to carry out world class war crimes and use you as complicit fools in doing that.

For everyone unwilling to be played that way, there is the challenge posed by Bob Avakian:

What is called for, and urgently now, is to oppose all imperialist marauders and mass murderers, and all systems and relations of oppression and exploitation, while giving particular emphasis to opposing “our own” imperialist oppressors who commit their monstrous crimes “in our name” and seek to rally us to support them on the basis of a grotesque American chauvinism, which we must firmly reject and fiercely struggle against.