-By Warner Todd Huston
Are we beginning to see the first cracks in the idea of “universal jurisdiction,” the international busy body “law” that said that any nation can arrest the leaders of any other nation and try them for “war crimes”? Let us hope we are, at least.
Now, I’ve always contended that the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals was a mistake. Not because those Nazi scum were innocent, far from it. But, rather, because it set a bad precedent that contended that the “international community” was qualified to capture, prosecute, and punish “war criminals.” This entire concept is made to order if one wants to destroy national sovereignty but not for one much interested in the rule of law. In fact, it is a direct assault on any rule of law because it invites the capricious rule of the mob (by reflecting current world opinion) on just who is and who is not a “war criminal.” Not to mention that the assumption that a world body can make these determinations must as a matter of course preclude any power over its own people by the individual nations involved. The determination of the “world community” will and must supersede national legal rulings — unless those rulings happen to agree with that world opinion which only makes the national decision at best perfunctory and certainly pointless.
International Busy Body Laws Waning?”
In keeping with the America denigrating tone set by president Obama, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, told participants of the United Nations Human Rights Council that the U.S. has “
Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA) wants to speed the process of
An extremely liberal co-worker of mine — he’s in the past said that the “rich” should be killed, for instance — asked me a serious question by which he felt he could gauge whether or not I was a “real” American in his eyes during the rise of the age of Obama. He wondered whether I wish success for Barack Obama as our president. After a few seconds of reflection I had to honestly give a qualified “no” in answer to his query. Naturally this fellow went off about how it was unAmerican to wish the president to fail and how it would damage the country. But, after he briefly calmed down, and brief calm is usually all we can expect from him, I gave him a fuller explanation.
General Wesley Clark had one thing right during his tenure as a general in the U.S. military. He understood the portentous nature of the Russian’s move to take control of the airport in Pristina, Kosovo at the end of the 1999 NATO engagement in Yugoslavia. He ordered NATO forces to gear up to prevent the Russians from taking the airport but was opposed by British Gen. Michael Jackson, at the time head of the Kosovo peacekeeping forces, who reportedly told Clark that he wouldn’t help him start a third World War.
If they had a reality show for international politicians called “Biggest Loser” the most popular nominee for the title would be Mikhail Gorbachev, the man that lost his whole country, not merely an election. Yet, every once in a while and for some untenable reason, this communist loser is trotted out by the US media as some sort of expert on international politics. Unsurprisingly, his opinion is always sought to act as an attack on a Republican politician or policy. This time it is the
In another blow against freedom of speech on the Internet,
We are told over and over again that the United Nations is the answer to all the world’s ills. It is often claimed that without the UN things would be so much worse in troubled spots around the world. But, when we look at the pernicious effect the UN has where ever it goes, it’s awfully hard to reconcile the claims with the hard truth. For one thing, we’ve seen the UN responsible for turning indigenous teens into prostitutes for UN workers in
Through the pessimistically, penumbrous pen of Parag Khanna, the New York Times has declared that
Moisés Naím who is also editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine wants to pretend that he and his ilk love America in a Washington Post op ed. But, after reading his newest editorial, titled 