At 02:23 PM 4/11/02 -0400 Jon Gabriel wrote:
>>From Associated Press' newswire. I'm unfamiliar with this other than what
>I've read in the attached single article, but.... at first glance... I don't
>think we Americans should be above the law as they are trying to establish
>it.
But who gives *them* any right to establish law over us?
I think that this article is a classic example of how the United Nations is
slowly beginning to outlive its usefullness. The UN was conceived as a
vast "talking shop", where nations with radical differences could talk them
out, rather than fight them out in a costly and bloody war.
Unfortunately, nowadays, the UN is rapidly approaching delusions of "world
governance", even though the world is in no way at all suited for world
governance at the current time.
For example, lets take the best known model of world government - the
United States of America. (Surprised? Think about it for a moment, the
name..... United States.... compare to United Nations..... and the
difference between a "State" and a "Nation"?) The United States works as
a supra-government, because it is democratic, and more importantly - each
of its constituent elements its democratic. Just as importantly, the
United State has a shared cultural and legal tradition that has given its
people a common sense of "fairnes", "right and wrong", etc. All are
essential elements of world governance.
Now, enter the United Nations and the world governance of the "ICC." The
ICC simply fails under so many tests, that it is hard to even know where to
being:
1) It, like the UN, is based on the fundamentally flawed principle of "one
nation, one vote." I personally get a huge kick out of all the ranting
and raving that went on in Brin-L about how undemocratic the "electoral
college" of the United States is, but then those very same people see no
irony in turning around and lambasting a system where *only* the States are
given the people (as opposed to the US where voting by State is paired with
voting by the individual in all of our institutions.)
Now, while "one State, one Vote" is a very good principle to use when
discussing issues of war, peace, and security among States - it is a wholly
inadequate methodology to use for world government. After all, "the
State" is a completely arbitrary unit - which is why two areas of roughly
equaly population, the US and the EU get a completely disparate number of
votes under the "one State, one Vote principle." This is, of course, a
great scam for the Europeans who can all vote together and rant to the
United States about the opinions of the "international community", even
though the EU is basically every bit as much a State as the US was under
the Articles of Confederation, and is of similar population and diversity.
But international opinion looks much different when you compare the
opinion of one US to 20 or so EU Members instead of one US to one EU.
2) The constituent elements are non-democratic. The mere idea that the
votes of brutal dictatorships like China, absolute monarchies like Oman,
theocracies like Saudi Arabia, etc. should be able to place any sort of
obligation upon the United Sates would ordinarily be absurd if it were not
so real. The United States has an obligation to its citizens, and as
such, it cannot submit its citizens to the votes of countries in a world
where the vast majority of national governments are dominated by
corruption, totalitarianism, and yes, anti-Americanism. Heck, the
international community can't even judge a *figure skating* competition
fairly, and now we are supposed to submit our own citizens to this kind of
judgement?
3) Finally, even if we were to only make the ICC party to democratic
States, there is little shared understanding of "law" and "fairness" even
between Europeans and Americans. For example, European governments are
convinced that one of the greatest horrors of the modern era is that the
United States might but the murdered of hundreds of people to death, even
though the American government, most American people, and even most
European people don't have a problem with it. Likewise, the Europeans are
completely horrified by the fact that when bombing terrorist camps, one of
those bombs just might kill a civilian, Given that the Americans and
Europeans are completley unequally yoked in the system for maintaining
international peace and security, this is a HUGE problem. Let's look at
the past 10-15 years or so. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Somalia
disintegrated into anarchy, Haiti disintegrated into anarchy, Serbia
invaded Bosnia, Serbia oppressed Kosovo, and when Isarel and Palestine
started fighting each other, every time the *European Governments* called
on America to *do something* (I won't even mention Afghanistan, even though
Europe did invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty) - that something
usually meaning sending *our* troops into harms way. Now, if one assumes
that once one's troops are in hard ways, there is a much greater likelihood
of mistakes occurring - then the ICC is a great deal for the Europeans.
The Europeans already take a disproportionate amount of the risk in
maintaining international peace and security as compared to the Americans,
and the ICC lets them increase the severity o those risks - an increased
severity that will largely be born by Americans. And when the Americans
refuse to accept this, they get to play to their domestic constituencies by
one again bashing America.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"We fight against poverty because faith requires it and
conscience demands it." - George W. Bush 3/22/02
