So the international court goes in to effect today. Fuck them.

Any real country would have to be stupid to join that thing, and feel bound by it. As it is, the UN is a forum for a lot of little insignificant countries to join together and get this - outvote the US. Yes, fellows, they can simply think that they are stronger because they can say whatever they want about the US and it becomes an international statement. The US did not become the strongest and most powerful military, social, cultural, and economic power in the history of the planet so that we can have a bunch of banana republics headed by the Sudan and Cambodia drag some US general in to court for War crimes, while they sit around and protect each others' crazy despots from well deserved charges of genocide and the like.

In general, countries with nothing to loose should not have power. One should get power (and legitimately be able to exercise it responsibly) by having something to loose. The US, and her government, for example has a lot to loose by screwing up. Any administration that wants to stay in power here can't afford a fiasco. They cannot afford a mass murder (and no, by this I do not mean 4 dead, and even then . . .), and they cannot afford a nuclear confrontation.

Governments like Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and the Sudan have nothing to loose by wiping out a neighboring country. Why? Because the government is not accountable. Power is not diffuse, it is not in the hands of the people. Whenever power is centralized with no checks or balances, the government can do whatever it wills, and retain power, because there is no one to take it away. What incentive does it have to be civil? To the extent that a government is by the people it is for the people. To the extent it is for the people, it can only do things that the people approve of, and in general, that excludes nuclear war, genocide, killing it enemies en masse, killing its own citizens en masse, killing its own citizens period. . . .

Unfortunately most of the world's governments are not for the people. They are for themselves and those in power, and would really think of themselves of having lost little if say, one of their cities were erased from the map, either by them or someone else. Things like this have happened. That is how many governments stay in power. They destroy a few thousand people when their people are not behaving. (Hama, Syria, for example.)

So when these governments get together and decide that they will, for some twisted reason show their political strength against "American imperialism", a real country like the US will have little recourse. We would not invade them, for they are doing something legal, and even if we did, the government would not care, so the US kills a few hundred or thousand of its citizens, that is a price well worth it to the average despot, to show the world that he can get America, using their own "western" system of justice against them. It is a twisted game these people play, and if we can't play by their rules - which we certainly cannot if we want to stay a civilized power - we should just not play at all.

In this case, not playing means not joining this kangaroo court of international (read anti-America) "justice". America is not stupid. We cannot be bound by the rules of despots, czars, Psychotic Islamic fundamentalists, dictators, lunatics, terrorists, communists, Mafia leaders, or fascists. We cannot afford to play the game that one side can afford to loose, and the other side can't. When the stakes are that uneven, when we value life the way we do, and when they don't, we will loose. In a game of tit-for-tat with equal casualties (not the Akselrod type game) the side that loses is the side that values its members more. When a suicide bomber kills one other person he is ahead of the game. He won because, by his action, he claims that his life is worth less than the one he kills. Otherwise it is a bad trade, and he would not do it. If your average Palestinian thought that their lives wore worth living, they would not trade them for an Israeli life.

If your average dictator in the third world thought that they ran a country where anyone had a life worth living, they wouldn't sacrifice it for the sake of telling off the US, like Iraq does.

The US embargo effects the people, not the government. The government of Iraq (read Saddam) thinks it is well worth the Iraqi human blood, to slaughter as many of his people as necessary, to maintain an anti-US stance. Saddam stays in power no matter how many of his people die of inadequate medical supplies. So there is little the US can do to get at him short of a real invason. This economic this seems humane to us, and it keeps our own citizens believing that we are exerting humane pressure on the government, when in reality we are hurting the Iraqi people, and giving Saddam more incentive to get his people to hate the US. The conundrum is that we cannot hurt the Iraqi government without a military confrontation, and that will have severe direct civilian casualties, and we cannot get at the Iraqi government via economic warfare, as that will have indirect sever civilian casualties. Saddam is using his civilians like a human shield to protect himself. And he is doing a good job. He is still in power, and his people hate him, and the US, and everyone suffers except Saddam. (Why are we having such a problem killing the SOB? Anyone from the Pentagon with an answer?)

Now if people like this thought that they could get even one US general in to court on phony-trumped-up imaginary charges, and the price would be that all their top brass would one day legitimately be hung for war crimes, then so be it. That is a price the US should not have to pay. Every American tourist in say, France (who will comply with anything stupid), who was once a mechanic in the US army should not have to worry that one day Kazakhstan will demand his extradition him for war crimes. Every American tourist should not have to worry about ending up in a nightmare of diseased south-east Asian politics or some other God-forsaken morass of charges for compliancy with America while the top America-hater de jure, has a good laugh.

It is bad enough we have to put up with these countries sponsoring terrorism and other such crap, we do not need to grant them legal licence to ruin our lives, and our way of life as well.