Monday, March 8, 2010

The ICC

I hear a lot of conservatives say that they want America to be sovereign, and that means not adhering to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. They seem to imply that by joining we would be giving up our justice system, our very sovereignty, our ability to decide our own laws and punishment. There's two reasons why this is a ridiculous argument:

The ICC has received has indicted 14 people in it's 8 years of existence, and of those 14 only 5 are alive and have a court date. All of those indicted are indicted because they committed genocide or other egregious war crimes. The justice system in their nation has, for whatever reason, been unable to successfully prosecute them hence the ICC is. The implication that it will somehow usurp the US justice system is absurd once one knows the most basic facts about the ICC.

How can someone argue against the international rule of law? Specifically, how can someone argue for rule of law, just so long as we are exempt. In fact everyone else should follow it, but we don't have to because, you know, we we're such good people we don't need to anyway. How can we hope to have a moral superiority when we don't support prosecution of war criminals and people who commit genocide?

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