7 ms·

To me, a non-US citizen, it seems that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being quite reasonable here. ICC wants to investigate US military personnel tha

by jchb 6y ago

To me, a non-US citizen, it seems that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being quite reasonable here. ICC wants to investigate US military personnel that, allegedly, committed war crimes on Afghanistan soil after 2003. They can do that because Afghanistan ratified the ICC that year. Clearly, if the US wants to commit war crimes, they should only do that inside their own borders, where they are actually perfectly safe from the ICC. That being said, I don't like when this kind of issues are politicized ("Obama destroyed America", "Trump sucks on all issues", ...). So I looked up the numbers. The US congress and senate passed a law, in 2002, that gave the president authority to "with all means necessary, prohibit the International Criminal Court from seeking to exercise jurisdiction over United States persons, and allied persons" https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2002328 https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2002328 Votes by party Republican YEAS: 201 NAYS: 18 Democratic YEAS: 195 NAYS: 13 Doesn't seem to be a "current administration" issue only. Clearly the US was caught up in the post-9/11 panic at the time of passing this law. But it seems a good idea to repeal it - if there is no longer a majority in support of it.

mola 6y ago
Well that's still is politics. The US lost its marbles after 9/11. Obama was trying to stear the boat a different way, but he didn't have the support of the legislative bodies which made it their job to give him hell no matter what. Anyway, The bill didn't specify the means, so the means are a part of policy. Sanctioning these type of individuals is a bully move. This administration has picked a strategy of being a bully.
- adventured 6y ago
  > Obama was trying to stear the boat a different way, but he didn't have the support of the legislative bodies which made it their job to give him hell no matter what. No he wasn't. He went after journalists in the most vicious way since Nixon. His intelligence services violated privacy in the US on a scale never seen before in the country. He attempted to invade Syria and de facto ended up doing exactly that, starting new wars across the Middle East. He didn't do a damn thing different, he was just another President in the White House committing new atrocities, like the guy before him. Then on the way out the door he sent the FBI after his replacement, in a pre-staged attempted coup. Dirty as can be. People try to pretty up the Obama Administration years, because he's a fan favorite. I get it, he's a lot more likable than Bush or Trump; he's more composed, smoother, and smarter. It's all a con, all the way down to the fraudulent Nobel Peace Prize he apparently got ahead of time for destroying Syria and Libya. His Presidency was a travesty filled with many acts of extraordinary evil. There should have been a Syria death counter every night on CNN, but the left didn't have the integrity to do it to one of their own.
  - rusticpenn 6y ago
    There is a lot of perspective missing here. Libya was in total chaos before US or France began supporting the civilians. The support from US (and France) was welcome at that time and was a huge relief to the civilians there. I am not sure how he destroyed Syria. The whole resistance was part of the Arab Spring. It was a mixture of unhappiness with the dictatorship and the food scarcity outside of the cities. The involvement from outside powers came in very late and mostly were half hearted approaches (except the Russians). Obama is not perfect, and during his reign, journalism and whistleblowers were affected a lot. He also had other issues but these were not part of them.
    - fit2rule 6y ago
      Libya didn't have open slave markets until the US and the French decided to bomb the shit out of their society, then send in billions of dollars to fund insurgents, and then arm those insurgents and let them promote their hateful ideology, in order to 'weaken the Middle East'. Don't even try not to own up to that fact. Everyone who has been counting the piles of smoking rubble the US and its allies leave around the place, know just how much nicer things were before Americans decided to drop bombs on people they think the world doesn't care about.
      - rusticpenn 6y ago
        I am not American and dont live in USA. I was following the events in Arab Spring very closely even before USA was involved. It was expected that the situation will get worse before it got better when/if the dictators went down.
        luckylion 6y ago
        ... and then it never did. I mean, if we don't set a timer on it, I'm sure they will, eventually. But "in 2155, Aliens shared their wisdom with humanity and it lead to global peace, which also included Libya" shouldn't be attributed to the NATO intervention. The direct, immediate consequences (that is: the current state) have to be attributed to the intervention. Some consider the belief "hey, we'll just bomb it and everybody will love each other and it'll be great" naivete bordering on retardation, but I think "we really didn't know any better" has to be ruled out after repeated use. At some point even a toddler learns not to put their hand on the hot stove, unless pain is their goal.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > Sanctioning these type of individuals is a bully move The Republican administration pre-Trump appeared to be on a mission to glass 2 countries and entirely spirited at the thought of gearing up and invading of Iran. It was so terrible that the Obama Administration's foreign policy, which had a lot of problems, looked pretty good by comparison. I'm not sure where the "international cooperation not based on power and submission" business the thread root was talking about, but speaking as a foreigner I would encourage US administrations to stick to bullying, this is the good end of the spectrum of US foreign policy. 2000-2010 wasn't that long ago.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Long term, internal instability of the US translates to much, much worse instability for the world.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  The "rules-based order" of the world is essentially a US-led world order. What is fascinating is that the US itself is dismantling it, ultimately leading to a world that is no longer US-led and where the US is a lot poorer.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > What is fascinating is that the US itself is dismantling it, ultimately leading to a world that is no longer US-led and where the US is a lot poorer. It makes sense when one looks at who is behind Trump and his success, and that's Putin (and, until maybe two years ago, China). Wherever the US has pulled out of, Russia and China have benefitted, especially as us Europeans are still a fractured bunch: Libya, the entire Syria clusterfuck, all of Africa where Western financiers have dropped out because of corruption and got replaced by China's New Belt Road, and I highly doubt that China would have gone against Hongkong or Taiwan if the current President were someone actually competent.
    - throwaway4good 6y ago
      I don't buy the idea that Trump is controlled by Putin. Actually I think it is a silly and unconstructive conspiracy theory. How it is very obvious that Russia is cheerleading and encouraging the move away from the global "rules-based order". To be convinced of that just spent a bit of time watching Russia Today or similar.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        Not passing judgment on this particular conspiracy theory, but Putin or Xi need not control -- or even have a relationship with -- Trump to get the effect they want. Trump unabashedly showed the world the kind of man he is, even before being elected. A foreign power could easily see that Trump would push an isolationist agenda that would benefit them.
        luckylion 6y ago
        What did Trump show them though? That he's a populist? That's not useful for any foreign power unless they can reliably sway the American public. Trump didn't show any strong ideological positions, it's not like there's a straight line running through 40 years. Trump is a wild card. You might argue that having a President that might do anything and everything in office is weakening the US, and that therefore strengthens other powers, but I'm skeptical that they're fine with "oh yeah, well, there's a 30 percent chance he watches an unfavorible documentary on Russia and goes into all-out Cold War mode". I don't think Trump is too predictable beyond a) Trump wants what's good for Trump and b) Trump will do what American corporations and the generic establishment wants (aka strong military, only favorable trade deals, no international cooperations that might lead to having to change behavior the US profit from). That's essentially rolling the dice. You might win a car, you might lose your life. How many leaders of aspiring or former world powers are going to roll that dice?
loopz 6y ago
It seems current administration in US is weak on crime, being criminals or aiding criminals. What goes against Law in Parliament is crime, not politics.
- jchb 6y ago
  I think this is less about wanting to protect criminals, and more about US sovereignty at all costs. And clearly upholding this sovereignty was one of Trumps election promises. Under this philosophy (or doctrine, if you will) of sovereignty, US will never accept that the ICC - an entity that the US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to - are trying to prosecute US nationals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_Uni...
  - caf 6y ago
    US nationals get prosecuted by entities that US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to all the time.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      > US nationals get prosecuted by entities that US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to all the time. How so? If you visit a foreign country, you are making an explicit choice to enter their jurisdiction. If you are extradited from the US, it means the government (your representatives) explicitly chose to cooperate with another jurisdiction in some manner. The current case is somewhat confusing to me. The US doesn't participate in the ICC. The matter to be investigated apparently occurred in a country that does participate though. But the suspects were part of an active military operation. Unlike a tourist, it doesn't really seem like armed forces are usually subject to the laws of a jurisdiction they might "visit" during combat (typically quite the opposite in fact). If someone from outside your jurisdiction threatens your citizens, isn't any capable government supposed to take actions to protect them? To me, the real question here is why the US isn't part of an international effort to prevent war crimes.
idoubtit 6y ago
> it seems that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being quite reasonable here. It's as much politics on the ICC side as on the USA side. For years, the ICC had only prosecuted former warlords from African countries. Only the loosing sides, the criminals that won national power were usually ignored, as the recent Ivory Coast shows. So some African leaders protested and even removed their country from the ICC. So the court had to react, at least to show an intention even if a real prosecution is totally unrealistic. So the ICC Prosecutor — which is the former Ministry of Justice of the Gambia dictator — launched inquiries about crimes by security forces of Myanmar (Birmania), Israel, USA… It's mostly a symbolic gesture.
- nsajko 6y ago
  Your comment is interesting and informative for sure, but I don't understand why do you think that the Court finally taking up more difficult cases is a bad thing?
- specialist 6y ago
  I wonder if some sort of war crimes reporting funnel would be useful. Along the lines of Project Censored. Like a citizen's police blotter. Or citizen's oversight board. It'd still take extraordinary effort to persuade (shame) prosecution to take action. But with some transparency, at least the torrent of evil stuff would be recorded by someone somewhere.
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    I am slow and likely missed the joke. Does an organization like Wikileaks ring a bell? Public reaction to that definitely keeps these sort of reporting funnels useless, get tortured at best.
    - specialist 6y ago
      Sure. And how about something a bit more formal? Maybe modeled after police department citizen review board? With a staff to injest, process, and interpret stuff? Like Project Censored. I half thought that maybe Wikileaks might do some of this. And I should have probably scouted a bit before asking for something that already exists. (I hadn't actually ever visited the site before. I've never been terribly eager to get myself added to some watch lists.) Alas. https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=war+crimes https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=war+crimes Not much value add there. It really is just a fancy FTP site with a search engine. The org itself does some competent press releases, swag, and branding; that ain't nothing.

by jchb 6y ago

mola 6y ago

Well that's still is politics. The US lost its marbles after 9/11. Obama was trying to stear the boat a different way, but he didn't have the support of the legislative bodies which made it their job to give him hell no matter what. Anyway, The bill didn't specify the means, so the means are a part of policy. Sanctioning these type of individuals is a bully move. This administration has picked a strategy of being a bully.

adventured 6y ago
> Obama was trying to stear the boat a different way, but he didn't have the support of the legislative bodies which made it their job to give him hell no matter what. No he wasn't. He went after journalists in the most vicious way since Nixon. His intelligence services violated privacy in the US on a scale never seen before in the country. He attempted to invade Syria and de facto ended up doing exactly that, starting new wars across the Middle East. He didn't do a damn thing different, he was just another President in the White House committing new atrocities, like the guy before him. Then on the way out the door he sent the FBI after his replacement, in a pre-staged attempted coup. Dirty as can be. People try to pretty up the Obama Administration years, because he's a fan favorite. I get it, he's a lot more likable than Bush or Trump; he's more composed, smoother, and smarter. It's all a con, all the way down to the fraudulent Nobel Peace Prize he apparently got ahead of time for destroying Syria and Libya. His Presidency was a travesty filled with many acts of extraordinary evil. There should have been a Syria death counter every night on CNN, but the left didn't have the integrity to do it to one of their own.
- rusticpenn 6y ago
  There is a lot of perspective missing here. Libya was in total chaos before US or France began supporting the civilians. The support from US (and France) was welcome at that time and was a huge relief to the civilians there. I am not sure how he destroyed Syria. The whole resistance was part of the Arab Spring. It was a mixture of unhappiness with the dictatorship and the food scarcity outside of the cities. The involvement from outside powers came in very late and mostly were half hearted approaches (except the Russians). Obama is not perfect, and during his reign, journalism and whistleblowers were affected a lot. He also had other issues but these were not part of them.
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Libya didn't have open slave markets until the US and the French decided to bomb the shit out of their society, then send in billions of dollars to fund insurgents, and then arm those insurgents and let them promote their hateful ideology, in order to 'weaken the Middle East'. Don't even try not to own up to that fact. Everyone who has been counting the piles of smoking rubble the US and its allies leave around the place, know just how much nicer things were before Americans decided to drop bombs on people they think the world doesn't care about.
    - rusticpenn 6y ago
      I am not American and dont live in USA. I was following the events in Arab Spring very closely even before USA was involved. It was expected that the situation will get worse before it got better when/if the dictators went down.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        ... and then it never did. I mean, if we don't set a timer on it, I'm sure they will, eventually. But "in 2155, Aliens shared their wisdom with humanity and it lead to global peace, which also included Libya" shouldn't be attributed to the NATO intervention. The direct, immediate consequences (that is: the current state) have to be attributed to the intervention. Some consider the belief "hey, we'll just bomb it and everybody will love each other and it'll be great" naivete bordering on retardation, but I think "we really didn't know any better" has to be ruled out after repeated use. At some point even a toddler learns not to put their hand on the hot stove, unless pain is their goal.
roenxi 6y ago
> Sanctioning these type of individuals is a bully move The Republican administration pre-Trump appeared to be on a mission to glass 2 countries and entirely spirited at the thought of gearing up and invading of Iran. It was so terrible that the Obama Administration's foreign policy, which had a lot of problems, looked pretty good by comparison. I'm not sure where the "international cooperation not based on power and submission" business the thread root was talking about, but speaking as a foreigner I would encourage US administrations to stick to bullying, this is the good end of the spectrum of US foreign policy. 2000-2010 wasn't that long ago.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Long term, internal instability of the US translates to much, much worse instability for the world.
throwaway4good 6y ago
The "rules-based order" of the world is essentially a US-led world order. What is fascinating is that the US itself is dismantling it, ultimately leading to a world that is no longer US-led and where the US is a lot poorer.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > What is fascinating is that the US itself is dismantling it, ultimately leading to a world that is no longer US-led and where the US is a lot poorer. It makes sense when one looks at who is behind Trump and his success, and that's Putin (and, until maybe two years ago, China). Wherever the US has pulled out of, Russia and China have benefitted, especially as us Europeans are still a fractured bunch: Libya, the entire Syria clusterfuck, all of Africa where Western financiers have dropped out because of corruption and got replaced by China's New Belt Road, and I highly doubt that China would have gone against Hongkong or Taiwan if the current President were someone actually competent.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    I don't buy the idea that Trump is controlled by Putin. Actually I think it is a silly and unconstructive conspiracy theory. How it is very obvious that Russia is cheerleading and encouraging the move away from the global "rules-based order". To be convinced of that just spent a bit of time watching Russia Today or similar.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Not passing judgment on this particular conspiracy theory, but Putin or Xi need not control -- or even have a relationship with -- Trump to get the effect they want. Trump unabashedly showed the world the kind of man he is, even before being elected. A foreign power could easily see that Trump would push an isolationist agenda that would benefit them.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        What did Trump show them though? That he's a populist? That's not useful for any foreign power unless they can reliably sway the American public. Trump didn't show any strong ideological positions, it's not like there's a straight line running through 40 years. Trump is a wild card. You might argue that having a President that might do anything and everything in office is weakening the US, and that therefore strengthens other powers, but I'm skeptical that they're fine with "oh yeah, well, there's a 30 percent chance he watches an unfavorible documentary on Russia and goes into all-out Cold War mode". I don't think Trump is too predictable beyond a) Trump wants what's good for Trump and b) Trump will do what American corporations and the generic establishment wants (aka strong military, only favorable trade deals, no international cooperations that might lead to having to change behavior the US profit from). That's essentially rolling the dice. You might win a car, you might lose your life. How many leaders of aspiring or former world powers are going to roll that dice?

loopz 6y ago

It seems current administration in US is weak on crime, being criminals or aiding criminals. What goes against Law in Parliament is crime, not politics.

jchb 6y ago
I think this is less about wanting to protect criminals, and more about US sovereignty at all costs. And clearly upholding this sovereignty was one of Trumps election promises. Under this philosophy (or doctrine, if you will) of sovereignty, US will never accept that the ICC - an entity that the US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to - are trying to prosecute US nationals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty_in_the_Uni...
- caf 6y ago
  US nationals get prosecuted by entities that US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to all the time.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > US nationals get prosecuted by entities that US citizens have not explicitly delegated their sovereign power to all the time. How so? If you visit a foreign country, you are making an explicit choice to enter their jurisdiction. If you are extradited from the US, it means the government (your representatives) explicitly chose to cooperate with another jurisdiction in some manner. The current case is somewhat confusing to me. The US doesn't participate in the ICC. The matter to be investigated apparently occurred in a country that does participate though. But the suspects were part of an active military operation. Unlike a tourist, it doesn't really seem like armed forces are usually subject to the laws of a jurisdiction they might "visit" during combat (typically quite the opposite in fact). If someone from outside your jurisdiction threatens your citizens, isn't any capable government supposed to take actions to protect them? To me, the real question here is why the US isn't part of an international effort to prevent war crimes.

idoubtit 6y ago

> it seems that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being quite reasonable here. It's as much politics on the ICC side as on the USA side. For years, the ICC had only prosecuted former warlords from African countries. Only the loosing sides, the criminals that won national power were usually ignored, as the recent Ivory Coast shows. So some African leaders protested and even removed their country from the ICC. So the court had to react, at least to show an intention even if a real prosecution is totally unrealistic. So the ICC Prosecutor — which is the former Ministry of Justice of the Gambia dictator — launched inquiries about crimes by security forces of Myanmar (Birmania), Israel, USA… It's mostly a symbolic gesture.

nsajko 6y ago
Your comment is interesting and informative for sure, but I don't understand why do you think that the Court finally taking up more difficult cases is a bad thing?
specialist 6y ago
I wonder if some sort of war crimes reporting funnel would be useful. Along the lines of Project Censored. Like a citizen's police blotter. Or citizen's oversight board. It'd still take extraordinary effort to persuade (shame) prosecution to take action. But with some transparency, at least the torrent of evil stuff would be recorded by someone somewhere.
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  I am slow and likely missed the joke. Does an organization like Wikileaks ring a bell? Public reaction to that definitely keeps these sort of reporting funnels useless, get tortured at best.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Sure. And how about something a bit more formal? Maybe modeled after police department citizen review board? With a staff to injest, process, and interpret stuff? Like Project Censored. I half thought that maybe Wikileaks might do some of this. And I should have probably scouted a bit before asking for something that already exists. (I hadn't actually ever visited the site before. I've never been terribly eager to get myself added to some watch lists.) Alas. https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=war+crimes https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=war+crimes Not much value add there. It really is just a fancy FTP site with a search engine. The org itself does some competent press releases, swag, and branding; that ain't nothing.