The United States and the World - The ICC Question

Kimball Kinnison

You're right: I read Vaderize post too quickly, it seems. I'm pretty sure the papers I read talked about nations who'd sign the ICC, but I don't know how much credit I should give to a very local newspaper as regards international news (plus, there's a chance that I also read this article too quickly ). If someone has a link to anything on the matter, I'd appreciate.

 

Vaderize,
I agree with you that Bush's language can be too strong, and I really wish he would work on that.

In practice, however, there is nothing that the US is doing any different that a host of other nations.

Go back a read the previous posts on this issue. There are links provided to the actual UN ICC site. I don't remember the exact number now, but many nations inserted exemptions into the bill (France and Australia come to mind).

The fact remains that the US has the UCMJ (backed by the Constitution) that already covers the conduct of military personnel.

The ICC is aimed at nations that do not have existing laws of a similar nature. For example, the citizens of Bosnia did not have an internal code that would prosecute Milosevic, so it fell to the UN and NATO to provide one.

I served 7 months in Bosnia before, and I can tell you by first hand account, that the US Army's presence is preventing further genocide.

I cannot discuss the specifics, and I wish I could post them, but I have actual pictures of the atrocities that occured. They are very sobering. I have one photo, taken in Sarajevo, that shows a graveyard containing 15,000 murdered people.

The US does not have to provide a military presence in the region, nor provide aid, nor support. We are there to protect certain groups of people from being exterminated.

All the government is doing is asking for the Constitutional protection that every US citizen ALREADY enjoys, be applied to the service members overseas.

 

Wow, nicely said Mr44

Cheers,
Shinjo!

 

Thank you Sinjo

I just feel that people sometimes form opinions on an issue without researching the facts.

NO ONE CAN FORM A VALID OPINION ON A SOUND BITE!

The US is not perfect, but it is not any worse than any other nayion on the Earth.

 

as was said earlier, the main reason for the ICC is so that whenever warcrimes on the scale of Bosnia, Rwanada, Sierre Leone and Cambodia happen again, and they will, the world community will have an established court and process ready to punish the wrongdoers, whomever they maybe.....and as was mentioned earlier as well, all of the above examples of states were collapsed states, where there had to be an impostion of an international court, as there was either no exisiting functioning court capable of dealing with the issues or the internal situation was such that no internal court would be able or allowed to do its job properely.

It is a well known principle of international law that you don't have to agree to everything in a treaty, you can opt out of certain parts of treaties, and if your obejections are made clear from day one and recorded as such then you will not as a country be bound by those specific provisions............America could and should stay in the ICC, it exists merely as a permanent war crimes tribunal, to deal with situations where there is no existing machinery capable of dealing with war crimes......

 

Well posted Mr44.

I support bush's position here, I just think he needs to better learn the language of international diplomacy.

A lot of the 'rules' are utter nonsense and are reminiscent of King Louis XIV's court with its gestures and looks, but nonetheless, the system does exist.

It's just a shame Bush is labelled 'nationalist' for trying to protect americans overseas.

Peace,

V-03