It’s not appropriate for an international court that we’re not even a part of to put our Presidents and their subordinates on trial, nor is it something we should meekly concede to.
But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
The U.S. openly assassinates foreigners in foreign countries without even faking a trial.
It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial. Do you think it is inappropriate for a high school moot court team to put U.S. Presidents on trial? Or for speech and debate teams to argue the morality of the actions of U.S. politicians?
How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
If I were neutral on America and if a neutral disposition, you might be correct. However, I’m not.
The President of the United States is elected to be a civil and military leader, as the Head of the United States Government, as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and to represent the United States abroad as our Head of State.
All other things being equal, I would prefer the POTUS to also be moral and to generally be a good moral leader in his capacity as the POTUS, but that is not the same as being nice, and “nice” is not what the elected President is elected to be.
So, would I for example, prefer to capture people like Qasem Soleimani and try them in an open court? Absolutely. Is that more practical than having killed him when the opportunity presented itself dealing a blow to an enemy nation, taking out one of the most important men in his nation which is openly hostile to America and our ally? Not really, but I’d rather see someone like that dead than in a position to threaten American assets and personnel in the region. You can even debate whether American assets or personnel should be in the region, but as long as they are, it is absolutely the President’s job to defend them, because it is under his orders that they are present at all and the American military is formed from the people of our country, and nowhere is it written in our Constitution that the President’s decisions should be second-guessed or tried in an International Court. Even our own courts shy away from this as it relates to foreign policy and the policy of the military.
> It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial.
It would be pretty easy to complain if they pursued trying American citizens when we don’t recognize their jurisdiction over American citizens. The ICC, whatever else it is, is still a court with the backing of real sovereign nations. They’re not a high school debate club.
> How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
A combination of morality, the law, diplomacy and hard power. You can even concoct scenarios if you wanted to where the United States may even been in the losing moral position but still win on all other fronts, but for starters, we’re not party to the Rome Statute, we do have our own laws on trying war crimes, and we also maintain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
My point was that even without the moral victory, there are real problems and limits with an International court attempting to second-guess our actions against hostile powers and serve process to our leaders, and that in reality, they’re not winning that fight. Certainly not today they’re not.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
In a similar vein, Poland has said Netanyahu would have been welcome to visit the liberation of Auschwitz, without having to worry about out any arrest.
Depending on how Hungary’s actions are resolved, the ICC will lose much of it’s use if member states just ignore the treaty.
Hungary though technically still a party, is withdrawing from the Rome Statute: https://www.reuters.com/world/hungarian-lawmakers-approve-bi...
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.
Should the Marine Corps. actually be put into a position to roll in and say “hi” to the people of The Hague for less than peaceful purposes on their leisurely stroll to the ICC’s courthouse, who in their right minds is also going to stand in their way and exchange fire?
Not to mention that whoever arrested the President has now effectively declared war on the United States.
I already said "...someone who is not the president, sitting of former....". You are just repeating.
US politics should not be "winner takes all", the entire point of having a distributed body of leadership and not just the Supreme Leader is that a wider variety of American interests are supposed to be represented.
Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding. Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
We do.
> Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding.
Other Americans. You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.
> Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
1) The Electors of the Electoral College are in turn elected by the people of the United States.
2) This only applies to the President and Vice President of the United States and no other public office.
3) Most States have laws against faithless electors, but the slate of electors appointed by each State’s elected legislature reflects the popular vote within that State.
> The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
Half of what you’re doing is just describing politics, but yes, the elected President makes appointments, and the elected Senate confirms or denies them.
Yes, we all saw it. It's a very small impact and it attracts the opposition of every big-dollar donors. Bernie Sanders proved it.
The massive infusion of cash from small-dollar donors and politicians playing to their base on TV to boost their fundraising is doing far more to undermine both the Democratic and Republican parties than large donors ever have.
Anything that violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice can land a soldier in the Army on that list up to and including killing random civilians abroad with military equipment outside the scope of an operation. You can look up the dockets for the other service branches yourself, but you don’t get impunity for all of your actions just for being part of the military.
Or if you want something more specific, here’s a rather high profile example: https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/prosecutions_convictions/
You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy. I am not. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden all murdered people and should be held accountable.
I’m not. (EDIT: just edited this in, though I thought I’d already written this part earlier when I quoted you. My bad.)
> You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
We do defend America’s interests, but the President—any sitting President—sets the agenda for how the American State and Military goes about it. Resource allocation is a part of leading. What part of that is difficult to understand?
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
The US has several ways to acquire jurisdiction over foreign defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_int...
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
If you look at the real history of the ICC, it’s effectively toothless over any nation that can safeguard its own sovereignty, and otherwise a fig leaf for the supposed lawfulness of foreign intervention into nations that cannot.
Pinochet was arrested after he was no longer president. He expected Chilean amnesty laws meant he was untouchable for his crimes. He was wrong.
If I commit an international war crime and get the US President to issue a pardon, then I'm free from legal problems in the US, but why should I expect to be able to visit The Netherlands without being arrested?
State visits are a different topic, with promises of safe passage/diplomatic immunity arranged before hand.
Castro visited the US several times during his presidency, for example, and Hungary recently promised to ignore the ICC arrest warrant on Netanyahu before his visit.
If guarantees cannot be made, the visit doesn't occur. It's as simple as that.
Why should becoming the president of France give Macron the right to sell old GREs online to people in the US, without fear of lawsuit and being tried in abstentia?
If such an exception exists, then Macron could make good money selling illegal drugs online to US citizens.
You can't have it both ways, we're intrinsically tied together. I think its important part of friendship to call one another to account.
All of that said, our Government, our problem, and while weighing what kind of intervention you might hypothetically support, also weigh how that stands up to the power of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. So, really, we can have it both ways, even if that makes us hypocrites. Also for what it is worth: people can be hypocrites, organized entities led by different factions of people over the course of their history like nations cannot.
Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable? I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
That's selling the Mai Lai massacre short. Hundreds of rapes and murders, convicted by a court of law.
Commuted to three years house arrest.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
Then here you write that Nurenmberg was appropriate and necessary.
You don't seem to be able to hold the thread of your own argument.
If you don’t care about any of that, sure, you can make the argument the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
Do note that the key difference between America in 2025 and Germany in 1945 is that we’re not a diminished State without really any sovereignty left to claim and haven’t recently invaded pretty much the entirety of Europe with the intention of subsuming it into a greater Empire and spent the last 4 years systematically destroying the entire Jewish population therein. That’s some important context and shouldn’t be overlooked in your zeal to put American Presidents on trial.
I was raised inside the United States. I have a very deep love for America. But the America I love is not a place. It is a collection of principles. It is an ideal. In as much as that ideal has been realized in the place I grew up, it makes that place America to me. But America the place and people have not been perfect executing America the idea. What group of humans ever were perfect? One of the beauties of America the place, and one of the things I cherish most about it is the constant willingness to put itself and its ideals on trial. I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
I believe it is un-American to refuse to ask the first question, but constantly ask the second question without considering the first. Using the second question to intimidate all those who ask the first question is repugnant to me. It threatens the America that I love.
America is on trial whether you like it or not. The America I love will always be on trial as long as it exists. To end the trial would kill that America.
Agreed, but I’ll put forth that the context for the first question also matters.
The context within this particular sub-thread which is within a larger thread regarding the ICC, the warrant issued againstNetanyahu and American sanctions on ICC staff is whether America and Americans as a non-signatory of the Rome Statute should be subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Actually it was originally Presidents, current and former, but there’s been some scope creep.
My answer is “No”. Your answer may be “Yes”, but I’m making the case for my “No”, not advocating for discarding all morality and total lawlessness and might-makes-right behavior, even if I think “might” is a mighty great deterrent for backing up that “No” to non-Americans that believe the answer should be “Yes” and would be willing to try out that “Yes” in the real world.
The rest of the Nazis were given amnesty and continued working for the USA, or continued living/serving as usual as part of West Germany's Wehrmacht forces.
The whole process was heavily politicized and completely sham, massive tortures were used to obtain "evidence" of guilt.
How could you think that 161 convictions was enough for this? Far more than that had direct agency and culpability for those crimes.
this basic contradiction basically tells you that it was all bogus, either there was no systematic extermination, or there was not enough people brought to justice for their crimes.
How many people do you think are required to do anything systematic on the territory spanning from France to Belarus ?
161 people is probably the headcount of my local DMV office.
also, the fact that mainstream western history over-indexes on the plight of one ethnic group (6 mln dead), and completely ignores the deaths of Soviets (27 mln dead) or China (20 mln) pretty much seals this whole thing as bogus politicized process.
Typical eurocentric history rewriting, while simultaneously white-washing the crimes of the same white europeans
I am not even mentioning genocide of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki via nuclear bombs and genocide of civilians in Dresden: all three cities were basically civilian with no large military armies in there. Mostly women elderly and kids died
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?