6 ms·

"Hague invasion act" =:-O The US truly are the bully in the room.

by Tepix 7y ago

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
Just to clarify, it is officially called 'American Service-Members' Protection Act' which was supposedly passed as there was a chance George W. Bush could be arrested & tried at ICC for war crimes; media & human rights organizations call it 'Hague invasion act' for what it is.
- 6510 7y ago
  he was already tried in absentia. It was easy, there are many TV interviews where W does a full confession by saying torture produces good information.
  - Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
    >he was already tried in absentia I think that was in 'Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission', it's not a U.N. recognised body.
- shifto 7y ago
  Imagine the US invading The Hague to rescue Bush Jr. How would this even go? Will this be a D-day like landing on Dutch beaches? Probably some boring demands and Netherlands will comply because big bad USA and such.
pjc50 7y ago
The US has a strong commitment to pardoning its war criminals and human rights violators. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-warcrimes-pardon/trump-pardons-army-officers-restores-navy-seals-rank-in-war-crimes-cases-idUKKBN1XQ03G https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-warcrimes-pardon... This, incidentally, is why it's hard to take seriously the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  ...while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world. Extradition to the US is very common. Not to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
  - cesarb 7y ago
    > while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world. Like how non-USA financial institutions have to care about whether their clients could be considered USA citizens, just because USA law says so. Or like USA export control laws apply to devices which were not manufactured in the USA, just because the device includes an USA-manufactured screw or something like that.
- riversflow 7y ago
  >the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover. You must be saying this in jest, or you have been brainwashed. Without even touching on the interment camps, which are definitely worse than the US prison system; here is demonstrable evidence that the US cares more about global human rights than the Chinese.[1] [1]https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/11/04/youll-be-fired-if-you-refuse/labor-abuses-zambias-chinese-state-owned-copper-mines https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/11/04/youll-be-fired-if-you-...
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    The United States invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on a thin pretext. It toppled the government of Libya, leading to years of turmoil and the return of literal slavery. It supported Sunni extremists in Syria that helped tear that country apart. It ran a global kidnapping and torture operation for years. It conducts drone assassinations around the world. When I hear Americans talking about the US standing for human rights around the world, I wonder where they've been living these past few decades.
    - 7y ago
fauigerzigerk 7y ago
Interestingly, the US would also have an obligation to defend The Hague against any invasion if the Netherlands were to invoke Article Five of the NATO treaty.
- pulse7 7y ago
  This can be invoked only if non-NATO member attacks...
rayiner 7y ago
How is that bullying? The US doesn’t submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is voluntary. (India isn’t a member either.) Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Prosecution of an American by the ICC would therefore be an act of aggression and military response would be warranted. The US, in general, is defensive of its sovereignty. We have our own institutions and we are very protective of them. For example, we have a right to a jury trial by one’s peers n a criminal case. The ICC has no juries, and panelists are generally foreigners to the defendant. Criminal convictions in US federal courts (and nearly all states) require a unanimous verdict. The ICC requires a simple majority. The ICC allows trials in abstentia, regularly relies on hearsay evidence, etc. Our highest court is the United States Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court cannot hear appeals from the ICC and cannot issue judgments binding on the ICC. Our practices in these areas, such as jury trials, are the part of an unbroken line of law and tradition dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Those practices can be refined and improved, but that’s completely orthogonal to submitting to the jurisdiction of supra-national organizations like the ICC. Our institutions can always be improved. But that doesn’t mean we have to submit to someone else’s institutions. In my view, the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination? Why submit to the will of some foreign court that’s totally outside the framework of your own country’s laws, constitution, and institutions?
- pavlov 7y ago
  > "...the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination?" It's an easy question to ask when you're the guy at the top of the pile with the biggest guns and the ability to kill or capture your perceived enemies anywhere in the world. For everyone else, global institutions based on universal human rights are a welcome safeguard against the abuses of 20th century style sovereignty.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Name a large country that would really obey an ICC dictate that it didn't like (Namely China, India, USA, Russia, Great Britain, France, Germany, etc)
jariel 7y ago
"The US truly are the bully in the room." The world is a very fragile, dynamic balance of power and the US is the only thing holding it together. Despite many grievances, it's sad to see people fail to grasp this.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Given that the US funds more than 70% of all dictatorships, has funded and organised numerous coups against democratically-elected leaderships (to install US-friendly ones) and is currently waging several illegal wars in the middle east -- I don't see how you could argue that the US is holding anything together. Even at a cursory glance, they seem to be instigating most of the problems.
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  Such complete rubbish. The US is the country causing the chaos, not keeping the order. This is a lie America keeps telling its own citizens to justify American power abuse, aimed at nothing but maintaining the American empire. Those 80 military bases around the world are not to maintain peace, but to maintain American commercial and military interests.
  - jariel 7y ago
    This is wrong to the point that it's sometimes worrisome, the amount of arbitrary 'anti police' and 'anti Americanism' etc. here on HN and in other places that clouds otherwise intelligent judgement. I often wonder about the roots of this; of course 'the police' or 'America' have many faults, it's easy to point them out, but I'm always perplexed by those that can't see the bigger picture. As though it needs to be articulated - the US doesn't really gain a lot from it's military expenditures, or '80 bases' around the world. But the world would be in chaos without them. To start, 'high seas' (including the Suez Canal, the Gulf, and the Panama Canal) are currently open to anyone only due to US power. Particularly those 'strategic spots' - it is America that makes sure that anyone can use them. China, Russia, Iran - anyone. They're open, and free. The same cannot be said if antagonising powers like China, or local fiefdoms like a Panamanian populist to take over. The entire world takes the concept of 'open, navigable waters' for granted, but this would not be the case were there not a force to ensure that this happened. In Europe, the US is the only power preventing Russian Imperial expansion. Putin has already tried to 'pull a Crimea' in the Baltic states, it was only coordination by American-led NATO that enabled their defence. Even to this day, Europeans are very poorly coordinated on the issue. Ukraine would be fully under Putin's control, and Russia would be creeping into Poland. Georgia would have been invaded when the Russians occupied South Ossetia. In Asia, we can see most recently the attempt by China to take exclusive control of vast ocean territories off the coast of Philipines, Vietnam etc. - only America has the power to ensure that this area will generally stay open. S. Korea would not be a state without American power, it's possible that Japan would not, and certainly not Taiwan. More contentiously, the US holds some authoritarian powers together, but even then it's for the greater good. Most obviously Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, but even Qatar, Bahrain, UAE fall in this camp. These aren't the nicest states, but they are generally 'good players' on the international scene, they mostly help fight against terrorism, and they sell their Oil on the international markets and market prices. Without US support none of those countries would exist as such. We saw what Saddam did in Kuwait, and there's no reason to believe he would have stopped there. In particular, the Iranians have been trying to very seriously destabilise those countries for some time by providing weapons, political cover, training, and support. And that's just scratching the surface; without the US the high seas would not be open and navigable, the Suez/Panama/Gulf would be controlled by petty fiefs or hostile powers, large parts of Eastern Europe would be back in the Russian Empire and Putin would have that much more ability to antagonise, at very least Korea and Taiwan would not exist, and there'd likely be more hostility over there, and the Middle East would be unrecognisable, the hostilities would be far worse than they are today. And again - those are just the obvious areas - but if those dominos were to fall, so many others would. In short, a 'world without America' would be a dark and hostile place, there is no other leadership on the world stage that has the power to ensure the stability we have right now. Europe could, but they're not willing. Americans gain a little bit in terms of prestige, access to some foreign markets, and their own security, but frankly it's just not enough to justify in hard terms. Without the incredible goodwill of Americans the 'balance of internal political power' of their foreign policy would be such that they would have left the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Lithuanians, Polish etc. in the wind, long ago. In the 1990s it was looking like the American led world order would melt into democracy, but it's not going to be that way at least for the time being. FYI I'm not American.
dang 7y ago
Please keep nationalistic flamewar off HN and please don't post flamebait, period. The subthread this led to is exactly what we don't need here: tedious repetition of the same-old for the nth time, getting nastier as it goes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Hague invasion act" =:-O The US truly are the bully in the room.

by Tepix 7y ago

"Hague invasion act" =:-O The US truly are the bully in the room.

Just to clarify, it is officially called 'American Service-Members' Protection Act' which was supposedly passed as there was a chance George W. Bush could be arrested & tried at ICC for war crimes; media & human rights organizations call it 'Hague invasion act' for what it is.

6510 7y ago
he was already tried in absentia. It was easy, there are many TV interviews where W does a full confession by saying torture produces good information.
- Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
  >he was already tried in absentia I think that was in 'Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission', it's not a U.N. recognised body.
shifto 7y ago
Imagine the US invading The Hague to rescue Bush Jr. How would this even go? Will this be a D-day like landing on Dutch beaches? Probably some boring demands and Netherlands will comply because big bad USA and such.

pjc50 7y ago

The US has a strong commitment to pardoning its war criminals and human rights violators. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-warcrimes-pardon/trump-pardons-army-officers-restores-navy-seals-rank-in-war-crimes-cases-idUKKBN1XQ03G https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-warcrimes-pardon... This, incidentally, is why it's hard to take seriously the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago
...while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world. Extradition to the US is very common. Not to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
- cesarb 7y ago
  > while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world. Like how non-USA financial institutions have to care about whether their clients could be considered USA citizens, just because USA law says so. Or like USA export control laws apply to devices which were not manufactured in the USA, just because the device includes an USA-manufactured screw or something like that.
riversflow 7y ago
>the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover. You must be saying this in jest, or you have been brainwashed. Without even touching on the interment camps, which are definitely worse than the US prison system; here is demonstrable evidence that the US cares more about global human rights than the Chinese.[1] [1]https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/11/04/youll-be-fired-if-you-refuse/labor-abuses-zambias-chinese-state-owned-copper-mines https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/11/04/youll-be-fired-if-you-...
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  The United States invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on a thin pretext. It toppled the government of Libya, leading to years of turmoil and the return of literal slavery. It supported Sunni extremists in Syria that helped tear that country apart. It ran a global kidnapping and torture operation for years. It conducts drone assassinations around the world. When I hear Americans talking about the US standing for human rights around the world, I wonder where they've been living these past few decades.
  - 7y ago

fauigerzigerk 7y ago

Interestingly, the US would also have an obligation to defend The Hague against any invasion if the Netherlands were to invoke Article Five of the NATO treaty.

pulse7 7y ago
This can be invoked only if non-NATO member attacks...

rayiner 7y ago

How is that bullying? The US doesn’t submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is voluntary. (India isn’t a member either.) Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Prosecution of an American by the ICC would therefore be an act of aggression and military response would be warranted. The US, in general, is defensive of its sovereignty. We have our own institutions and we are very protective of them. For example, we have a right to a jury trial by one’s peers n a criminal case. The ICC has no juries, and panelists are generally foreigners to the defendant. Criminal convictions in US federal courts (and nearly all states) require a unanimous verdict. The ICC requires a simple majority. The ICC allows trials in abstentia, regularly relies on hearsay evidence, etc. Our highest court is the United States Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court cannot hear appeals from the ICC and cannot issue judgments binding on the ICC. Our practices in these areas, such as jury trials, are the part of an unbroken line of law and tradition dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Those practices can be refined and improved, but that’s completely orthogonal to submitting to the jurisdiction of supra-national organizations like the ICC. Our institutions can always be improved. But that doesn’t mean we have to submit to someone else’s institutions. In my view, the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination? Why submit to the will of some foreign court that’s totally outside the framework of your own country’s laws, constitution, and institutions?

pavlov 7y ago
> "...the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination?" It's an easy question to ask when you're the guy at the top of the pile with the biggest guns and the ability to kill or capture your perceived enemies anywhere in the world. For everyone else, global institutions based on universal human rights are a welcome safeguard against the abuses of 20th century style sovereignty.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Name a large country that would really obey an ICC dictate that it didn't like (Namely China, India, USA, Russia, Great Britain, France, Germany, etc)

jariel 7y ago

"The US truly are the bully in the room." The world is a very fragile, dynamic balance of power and the US is the only thing holding it together. Despite many grievances, it's sad to see people fail to grasp this.

cyphar 7y ago
Given that the US funds more than 70% of all dictatorships, has funded and organised numerous coups against democratically-elected leaderships (to install US-friendly ones) and is currently waging several illegal wars in the middle east -- I don't see how you could argue that the US is holding anything together. Even at a cursory glance, they seem to be instigating most of the problems.
socialdemocrat 7y ago
Such complete rubbish. The US is the country causing the chaos, not keeping the order. This is a lie America keeps telling its own citizens to justify American power abuse, aimed at nothing but maintaining the American empire. Those 80 military bases around the world are not to maintain peace, but to maintain American commercial and military interests.
- jariel 7y ago
  This is wrong to the point that it's sometimes worrisome, the amount of arbitrary 'anti police' and 'anti Americanism' etc. here on HN and in other places that clouds otherwise intelligent judgement. I often wonder about the roots of this; of course 'the police' or 'America' have many faults, it's easy to point them out, but I'm always perplexed by those that can't see the bigger picture. As though it needs to be articulated - the US doesn't really gain a lot from it's military expenditures, or '80 bases' around the world. But the world would be in chaos without them. To start, 'high seas' (including the Suez Canal, the Gulf, and the Panama Canal) are currently open to anyone only due to US power. Particularly those 'strategic spots' - it is America that makes sure that anyone can use them. China, Russia, Iran - anyone. They're open, and free. The same cannot be said if antagonising powers like China, or local fiefdoms like a Panamanian populist to take over. The entire world takes the concept of 'open, navigable waters' for granted, but this would not be the case were there not a force to ensure that this happened. In Europe, the US is the only power preventing Russian Imperial expansion. Putin has already tried to 'pull a Crimea' in the Baltic states, it was only coordination by American-led NATO that enabled their defence. Even to this day, Europeans are very poorly coordinated on the issue. Ukraine would be fully under Putin's control, and Russia would be creeping into Poland. Georgia would have been invaded when the Russians occupied South Ossetia. In Asia, we can see most recently the attempt by China to take exclusive control of vast ocean territories off the coast of Philipines, Vietnam etc. - only America has the power to ensure that this area will generally stay open. S. Korea would not be a state without American power, it's possible that Japan would not, and certainly not Taiwan. More contentiously, the US holds some authoritarian powers together, but even then it's for the greater good. Most obviously Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, but even Qatar, Bahrain, UAE fall in this camp. These aren't the nicest states, but they are generally 'good players' on the international scene, they mostly help fight against terrorism, and they sell their Oil on the international markets and market prices. Without US support none of those countries would exist as such. We saw what Saddam did in Kuwait, and there's no reason to believe he would have stopped there. In particular, the Iranians have been trying to very seriously destabilise those countries for some time by providing weapons, political cover, training, and support. And that's just scratching the surface; without the US the high seas would not be open and navigable, the Suez/Panama/Gulf would be controlled by petty fiefs or hostile powers, large parts of Eastern Europe would be back in the Russian Empire and Putin would have that much more ability to antagonise, at very least Korea and Taiwan would not exist, and there'd likely be more hostility over there, and the Middle East would be unrecognisable, the hostilities would be far worse than they are today. And again - those are just the obvious areas - but if those dominos were to fall, so many others would. In short, a 'world without America' would be a dark and hostile place, there is no other leadership on the world stage that has the power to ensure the stability we have right now. Europe could, but they're not willing. Americans gain a little bit in terms of prestige, access to some foreign markets, and their own security, but frankly it's just not enough to justify in hard terms. Without the incredible goodwill of Americans the 'balance of internal political power' of their foreign policy would be such that they would have left the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Lithuanians, Polish etc. in the wind, long ago. In the 1990s it was looking like the American led world order would melt into democracy, but it's not going to be that way at least for the time being. FYI I'm not American.

dang 7y ago

Please keep nationalistic flamewar off HN and please don't post flamebait, period. The subthread this led to is exactly what we don't need here: tedious repetition of the same-old for the nth time, getting nastier as it goes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html