Curse of the Day:
• May your rechargable batteries fail to recharge.

his is something long, and almost absent of humor, but it's a relatively complicated issue, so bear with me.  Or don't, and go look at the Hot or Not page again.

There is a new UN statute that's being ratified by most member nations, but the US is refusing to play along in any way.  The project is to establish a permanent, international, independent court for the trial of crimes against humanity. It would be called the ICC.

...the new International Criminal Court (ICC), the world's first permanent tribunal to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.

The Court, which will be set up in the Hague, Netherlands, early next year, is being created under the 1998 Rome Statute, an international treaty signed by almost 140 countries, that takes formal effect Monday, July 1. Despite strong opposition by the administration of President George W. Bush, 69 countries have ratified the Statute to date.

Clinton actually signed on to the Rome Statue when he was president, but in May the new administration backed out of the it.  The official US word is:

The Bush administration argues that the ICC lacks adequate safeguards against frivolous or politically-motivated prosecutions for which the U.S., with military personnel in more than 100 countries at any time, may be a particularly attractive target.

"We ought to be exempt from [this court] so that there isn't any kind of political harassment...particularly when you know you're fighting the global war on terror and you know the terrorist training books are encouraging people to make...charges [of war crimes] and allegations, and you know the press prints them instantaneously," Rumsfeld told international reporters earlier this week.

So basically he's saying that the US shouldn't be subject to the same rules and laws that every other country is going to be subject to.  The official word is that those other countries would use the law to try and harass US soldiers out fighting the "war on terror".  Most of the rest of the world thinks this isn't likely.

ICC supporters insist, however, that there are so many safeguards in ICC procedures, as well as in Status of Forces Agreements that are routinely negotiated with host countries before U.S. troops are deployed abroad, that the chances of any U.S. soldier being prosecuted by the ICC are extremely remote.

"The Rome Statute of the ICC already contains ample safeguards that would protect any United States troops against politically motivated or frivolous prosecutions," Amnesty said in its letter.

The US has been threatening to pull out of any peacekeeping mission rather than submit to the rules that govern other nations.  You'll savor the hypocrisy, where US leaders regularly call other nations "rogue states" for their refusal to follow UN decrees.

That was a few days ago: the US has now withdrawn from the Bosnian peacekeeping mission over this, or is going to if details can't be worked out by Wednesday.  Lest you think this is one of those UN things that all the little countries who never do anything, and the terrorist-sympathizing nations are in on together:

Thirteen of the [permanent security] council's 15 members -- including Britain, France, Russia and China -- had voted against the United States on the initial resolution to extend the mission, with Bulgaria abstaining.

Diplomats said it was the first time in memory they could recall Washington in open opposition to long-time close allies London and Paris.

Republicans in the US are long time opposed to any sort of international laws or courts, unless they are supporting our ends, or the ends of global businesses.  So this isn't anything unexpected from the current US administration, though it certainly looks like ugly American imperialism at it's finest.

Killing off the Bosnia mission would be a public relations nightmare for Washington, which was instrumental in bringing to an end the bloody three-year war in Bosnia that spawned the term "ethnic cleansing."

Following the U.S. renunciation of treaties on global warming and the global war crimes court, the mission's death would also likely reinforce allies' fears that President Bush had a dim view of international cooperation despite insistent pleas for help in the U.S. "war on terrorism."

But it could prove popular with Bush's conservative backers, many of whom dislike both the new court and U.S. participation in international peacekeeping operations.

The new court takes jurisdiction over heinous wrongdoing such as gross human rights abuses, genocide and war crimes on Monday, although its prosecutor, judges and courtrooms will not be in place in The Hague, Netherlands, until early next year.

The US is saying that it's about all peacekeepers being immune from prosecution when on peacekeeping missions, but that's just a sort of half-hearted cover story.

The U.N. Bosnia mission was launched in 1995 to train a professional multiethnic police force. The United States has 46 police officers in the mission but has refused to simply pull them out of the country to protect them from the new court's grasp. Instead it has insisted on a blanket Security Council resolution granting immunity from the global war crimes court for all U.S. personnel overseas.

It's tempting to lambaste the US administration for their amazingly-blatant hypocrisy, and to see that the real issue here is them wanting zero accountability for US actions.  In theory it's a court with laws and fair trials.  So why are we worried about US soldiers being tried for genocide or war crimes? We're the good guys, we'd never do anything like that in the first place, right?

Well, there have been numerous accusations of US soldiers in Afghanistan being involved in active torture.  Also every time some US peacekeeping mission/invasion (Iraq next?) goes off, there are lots of bombs that hit the wrong targets.  Hospitals and schools destroyed, residential areas with civilians leveled, etc.  The US media just refuses to report on that sort of thing, and the military does their best to cover up any news of it, but it's big news around the world.  So US citizens hear nothing about it, while most of the rest of the world sees the US as a bully pushing its way into other countries and wreaking havoc left and right while maybe doing some good in taking out some terrorists or some criminal.  Also, soldiers will be soldiers.  The history of warfare, especially on foreign soil, is pretty much a manual of "rape and pillage".  Modern troops are much more controlled than the conquest invasions of history, but you have to be realistic; if you're out there, thousands of miles from home, with people shooting at you, especially if you're somewhat of an ignorant hick, you're not going to really be too worried about the legal rights of some captured locals who were trying to kill you.  Vietnam is certainly ample evidence that American troops aren't above that sort of thing.

I don't think it would be a stretch to see the whole ICC as a reaction to the US military's typical procedures.  It's not like the "Axis of Evil" type nations have standing armies in other countries; but the US certainly does.

Don't think that Amnesty International has US military actions as it's highest priority: if you look at their site it's mostly worried about torture by the governments of various 3rd world nations.  They also have a lot of information about the ICC, that court that the US is so opposed to being subject to.  The rights of the accused are quite extensive, at least as thorough as a criminal suspect gets in the US; it's hard to read those and see why there would be anything to worry about in terms of false prosecutions, which is what the US is mostly bitching about.

I don't think it takes amazing insight to see the real issue with this whole subject.  The US military doesn't want to be subject to anyone, anywhere, telling them who they can or can not invade, for any reason, at any time.  And they especially don't want their soldiers to be subject to any international laws that might cramp their style in foreign nations.

This seems like an interesting topic, but I can't really get into it, so forgive my somewhat opinion-free analysis.  I need to see some fiery polemic on both sides, and then I can more easily figure who I disagree with.

In somewhat related news, there's a very thorough article on Fortune.com about the potential world wide reaction to another Iraqi war.  US military planners are going overtime on strategies to take out Saddan Hussein once and for all, and while that wouldn't really be too hard, in theory anyway, the problem is how the rest of the Arab states react, how Israel gets involved, what happens to world oil prices, etc.  The article paints a pretty gloomy picture of things, given the level of radicalism in the Islamic world at this point.  And keep in mind that Fortune is a very conservative, pro-business magazine.  If they think there could be big problems in the world economy and revolution in Saudi Arabia, I'd take that as a very strong possibility.