If this regime really does succeed in cutting the US out of the international community, I've long held the position that fully accepting ICC jurisdiction must be table stakes for the rest of the wotld to allow us back in.
I know a lot of people think the world will hold America in contempt, even if we say, elect someone like AOC. That we've screwed the pooch. I'd point out that China is literally genociding the Uyghur people and everyone is talking about China being the preferred leader of the world. When people say things like this, I really don't know what they're talking about. People's memories are short. The world literally forgot they hated us over the Iraq War in 30 seconds when Obama was elected. I hate to be blunt about it. But history shows time and time again, that memories are short.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a court for 3rd world despots who displease their international political leaders. Since its creation in 2002, the only defendants the ICC has tried have been African and it has never laid a glove on a national from a Security Council power. While the 1990s were heady times for those who believed that Nuremberg-derived system of international criminal law would soon take root, the dream of “universal jurisdiction” died after 9/11. While “Nuremberg” provided the legal and symbolic framework for many of the war crimes trials, its “legacy” remains unclear. In part, this is because what that name represents is really a series of contradictory trials with no single lesson to be learned. While “the Nuremberg trial” is often referred to in the singular, there were actually three major trial programs, all different in scope and meaning. Are you aware of West Germany’s rejection of the legal validity of the Nuremberg trials in the Bonn Treaty of 1952 or the American war crimes clemencies of the 1950s? Ernst Biberstein, Waldemar Klingelhoefer, and Adolf Ott were sentenced to death in 1948 in Nuremberg’s Einsatzgruppen case. The 24 defendants were accused of killing more than a million people. The prosecution’s entire case consisted of captured documents that were among the most incriminating documentary evidence ever presented in a war crimes trial. During their trial, the prosecution took only two days to present its case, which consisted entirely of their own reports. Biberstein admitted, “I personally superintended an execution in Rostov which was performed by means of a gas truck.” Ott was equally candid: “I have already said . . . every Jew who was apprehended had to be shot. Never whether he was a perpetrator or not.” Klingelhoefer reported from the Soviet Union in 1944: “Nebe ordered me to go from Smolensk to Tatarsk and Mstislavl to get furs for the German troops and liquidate part of the Jews there. The Jews had already been arrested by order of the Hauptsturmfuehrer Egon Noack. The executions proper were carried out by Noack under my supervision.” The prosecution called no witnesses and took only days to present their case. In 1958, Biberstein, Klingelhoffer, and Ott walked out of Landsberg Prison free men and pensioned veterans. The so-called “international community” has grown increasingly indifferent to and accepting of the horrors suffered by its most powerless, politically insignificant members. Today, despite the most comprehensive set of laws governing war and international relations in human history, the oldest and most basic distinction, the one between soldier and civilian, is fast disappearing. Given the trend of international law since the Nuremberg trials, the time has come to reconsider the legacy of the Nuremberg trials as more of an anomaly than a paradigm. Human rights and war crimes become considerations for U.S. foreign policy when they correspond with larger policy objectives, or more commonly, when they turn into public relations problems.
We never held ourselves accountable. We let off the Confederate generals and leaders, Nixon (Watergate), Reagan (Iran-Contra) and Bush (Iraq), the financial criminals of 2008, and now the Epstein monsters and their financial, intelligence, political and cultural enabler networks. Given that track record, it would be delightful to see justice done by the ICC. I have absolutely no faith that the Democrats, should they even take both the House and the Senate, will have the gumption to follow through with any promises to impeach and prosecute the criminals.
Signing the Rome Statute means that all the little Trumpniks would howl loud enough to deafen God if Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth had to face life in prison in a foreign country where they've never been and don't speak the language.
If this regime really does succeed in cutting the US out of the international community, I've long held the position that fully accepting ICC jurisdiction must be table stakes for the rest of the wotld to allow us back in.
I know a lot of people think the world will hold America in contempt, even if we say, elect someone like AOC. That we've screwed the pooch. I'd point out that China is literally genociding the Uyghur people and everyone is talking about China being the preferred leader of the world. When people say things like this, I really don't know what they're talking about. People's memories are short. The world literally forgot they hated us over the Iraq War in 30 seconds when Obama was elected. I hate to be blunt about it. But history shows time and time again, that memories are short.
Fair point
Someday some descendants of ours will pay for this.
Absolutely and I have anticipated a strike on our mainland. This attitude of being untouchable is naive and dangerous. Sykes just another dupe.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a court for 3rd world despots who displease their international political leaders. Since its creation in 2002, the only defendants the ICC has tried have been African and it has never laid a glove on a national from a Security Council power. While the 1990s were heady times for those who believed that Nuremberg-derived system of international criminal law would soon take root, the dream of “universal jurisdiction” died after 9/11. While “Nuremberg” provided the legal and symbolic framework for many of the war crimes trials, its “legacy” remains unclear. In part, this is because what that name represents is really a series of contradictory trials with no single lesson to be learned. While “the Nuremberg trial” is often referred to in the singular, there were actually three major trial programs, all different in scope and meaning. Are you aware of West Germany’s rejection of the legal validity of the Nuremberg trials in the Bonn Treaty of 1952 or the American war crimes clemencies of the 1950s? Ernst Biberstein, Waldemar Klingelhoefer, and Adolf Ott were sentenced to death in 1948 in Nuremberg’s Einsatzgruppen case. The 24 defendants were accused of killing more than a million people. The prosecution’s entire case consisted of captured documents that were among the most incriminating documentary evidence ever presented in a war crimes trial. During their trial, the prosecution took only two days to present its case, which consisted entirely of their own reports. Biberstein admitted, “I personally superintended an execution in Rostov which was performed by means of a gas truck.” Ott was equally candid: “I have already said . . . every Jew who was apprehended had to be shot. Never whether he was a perpetrator or not.” Klingelhoefer reported from the Soviet Union in 1944: “Nebe ordered me to go from Smolensk to Tatarsk and Mstislavl to get furs for the German troops and liquidate part of the Jews there. The Jews had already been arrested by order of the Hauptsturmfuehrer Egon Noack. The executions proper were carried out by Noack under my supervision.” The prosecution called no witnesses and took only days to present their case. In 1958, Biberstein, Klingelhoffer, and Ott walked out of Landsberg Prison free men and pensioned veterans. The so-called “international community” has grown increasingly indifferent to and accepting of the horrors suffered by its most powerless, politically insignificant members. Today, despite the most comprehensive set of laws governing war and international relations in human history, the oldest and most basic distinction, the one between soldier and civilian, is fast disappearing. Given the trend of international law since the Nuremberg trials, the time has come to reconsider the legacy of the Nuremberg trials as more of an anomaly than a paradigm. Human rights and war crimes become considerations for U.S. foreign policy when they correspond with larger policy objectives, or more commonly, when they turn into public relations problems.
We never held ourselves accountable. We let off the Confederate generals and leaders, Nixon (Watergate), Reagan (Iran-Contra) and Bush (Iraq), the financial criminals of 2008, and now the Epstein monsters and their financial, intelligence, political and cultural enabler networks. Given that track record, it would be delightful to see justice done by the ICC. I have absolutely no faith that the Democrats, should they even take both the House and the Senate, will have the gumption to follow through with any promises to impeach and prosecute the criminals.
Signing the Rome Statute means that all the little Trumpniks would howl loud enough to deafen God if Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth had to face life in prison in a foreign country where they've never been and don't speak the language.