Elite impunity shouldn’t protect those who covered up war crimes.
Matthew Miller, who served as State Department spokesman under Joe Biden, has vindicated his harshest critics. On June 24, 2024, as Miller walked to his car, pro-Palestinian protesters shouted, “Matthew Miller, you’re a liar!” Miller was a lightning rod for public condemnation because he, along with other spokespeople, was the public face of the Biden administration’s defense of Israel from accusations of committing war crimes in Gaza. Time and again in the last 16 months of the Biden administration, Miller was asked about creditable reports that Israel was committing war crimes. His standard response was that the Biden administration takes accusations of war crimes seriously and was evaluating the evidence in a “difficult” situation and, should sufficient evidence emerge, he stood ready to affirm that war crimes had been committed—but he was not yet ready to make that affirmation. In April of 2024, Miller said, “We have been very clear that we want to see Israel do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. We have made clear that…they need to operate at all times in full compliance with international humanitarian law.”
What made Miller a particularly galling character was the ghoulish smirk he wore as he highhandedly suggested that reporters and human rights organizations were rushing to judgment. On one occasion in November 2024, Miller actually laughed as a reporter asked about starvation in Gaza.
But now that he no longer works for the White House, Miller is singing a different tune. In an interview with Sky News released last Friday, Miller said, “I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes.” Miller added that Israeli soldiers were not being “held accountable” for their actions.
Asked to square the contradiction between what he said on the podium while addressing reporters and what he says now, Miller replied, “Look, one of the things about being a spokesperson is you’re not a spokesperson for yourself. You are a spokesperson for the president, the administration, and you espouse the positions of the administration. And when you’re not in the administration, you can just give your own opinions.”
Miller’s defense is absurd and morally offensive. While there are inevitably disagreements within administrations, there is a threshold of activity that calls not just for private disagreement but also public protest. Complicity in war crimes certainly meets that threshold. In 1974, Jerald terHorst resigned as Gerald Ford’s press secretary because he could not in good conscience defend the pardon of Richard Nixon. By any moral criteria, the pardon of Nixon, as dangerous as it was to democratic norms, was a lesser offense than American participation and whitewashing of Israeli war crimes that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians (and possibly hundreds of thousands).
Resignation is the only ethical option when the government you represent participates in war crimes. In May 2024, Stacy Gilbert, a career State Department official with 20 years of service, resigned because of a government report she felt falsely claimed that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid. Gilbert had contributed to the report and felt the facts were not accurately reflected in it. Nor was Gilbert alone in taking a stand. At least 13 other government officials resigned over Gaza—and in November 2023, more than 1,000 officials signed a letter calling for a ceasefire. Public protest, although damaging to one’s career, was always an option. It was a path Miller decided not to walk down.
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Speaking to Democracy Now!, Gilbert said, “That is not the view of subject matter experts at the State Department, at USAID, nor among the humanitarian community. And that was known. That was absolutely known to the administration for a very long time.”
One way to define the difference between Gilbert and Miller is that Gilbert understood that she worked for the American people, while Miller wrongly thought he worked for the Biden White House. But it wasn’t Biden who paid Miller’s salary; it was the public. If Miller genuinely believed that Israel was committing war crimes—and that the Biden administration was deliberately covering that up—he had a duty to the public to resign and speak the truth.
Miller is essentially claiming that it is acceptable to participate in war crimes if you are just following orders—an unsettling echo of the self-defense made by the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities.
Miller continues to justify the Biden administration’s decision to give Israel carte blanche. According to Miller, if the Biden White House had acted to end Israeli war crimes, it would have handed a victory to Hamas:
And it was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognise the state of Palestine—appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions—protests are appropriate—but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted.
It’s hard to know what to make of this rationalization. If the protests and recognition of Palestinian statehood were “appropriate,” then why did the Biden administration smear the protesters and object to the statehood declarations? More importantly, it makes no sense to say that stopping Israeli war crimes would amount to a Hamas political victory, since opposing war crimes was itself the stated goal of the Biden administration (and the official policy, although rarely acted on, of American governments going back to the creation of the liberal international order in 1945). Miller’s lies about Gaza were part of an endemic culture of deception and rejection of personal responsibility in the Biden White House. They are connected to the disastrous cover-up of Biden’s frailty. Miller says if he had been a private citizen, he would have opposed Biden’s running again, but as someone working inside the corridors of power, he had to keep quiet.
According to Miller, “It’s that collective action problem where no one wants to be the first to speak out and stand up alone. You stand up by yourself and get your head chopped off, stand up together, you can take action.” By this account, those with power are more constrained in telling the truth than ordinary citizens. If that’s the case, why should we take Miller seriously on anything? In the interview he also says, contrary to the assessment of numerous human rights groups, that he doesn’t think Israel’s war is a genocide. But if he lied before for political reasons, there is no reason to trust him now.
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The American political system has long operated under a mafia-like code of omertà and impunity. Consider all the political figures that suffered no real loss of social status for catastrophic lies about war and peace: Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. Miller can get away with acknowledging that he wasn’t candid because he knows he’ll remain a member in good standing of the political elite.
But there is no reason this system of elite impunity, which has led to so much harm, should remain in place. Ideally, Miller should be tried before a war crimes tribunal. That is not likely to happen: International law is traditionally used only against weak nations, not the governing class of a superpower. But what if ordinary citizens stepped in to say that Miller, and those like him, deserve to be ostracized? What if a progressive running for president in 2028 said they would blacklist from their administration Miller and similar figures (such as former national security adviser Jake Sullivan and former secretary of state Anthony Blinken). Matt Duss of the Center of International Policy, commenting on Miller’s interview, noted, “They all knew. All of them. They misled the public, and the Congress, because Biden wanted to keep sending weapons.” If they all knew, they should all be ostracized.
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