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rfinney

ICC has no jurisdiction in the United States. U.S. did not ratify the treaty. No point in letting them pretend they do.

Imagine European idealists prosecuting Clinton, Bush and Obama for "war crimes"? No way.

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Neither did Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.

Here's the map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#/...

The ICC is no better than the US. It's selective justice, to further political ends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...

For example, I find it incredibly hard to believe there aren't more than a few Palestinian war criminals (regardless of any opinion of the justness -or not- of their "struggle", each side should admit there are more than a few immoral actions committed on both sides), for example, yet we see zero action. ALL the prosecuted individuals from former Yugoslavia are from one particular side of the conflict ... it is completely absurd. The same can be said for half the countries listed, no shortage of genocides committed by these people. Those are just the things that really jump out at me.

Here's another thing: there are plenty of war criminals in the Netherlands. Even their home country, the Netherlands, has refused to persecute people involved in:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawagede_massacre

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rengat#The_Rengat_massacre

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

The Dutch state has chosen to protect both individuals, commanders and the chain of command in military and government in each case. Do I really need to point out that this directly contradicts the rules of the UN and the statutes of the ICC as well as Dutch law ? It seems redundant at this point.

And if you look to Dutch history, the role of the Dutch Royal family in hundreds of genocides ... this is not going to improve your opinion of the country (which the Royal family still more or less controls).

Here's what the Dutch do to war criminals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutchbat#/media/File:Unifill_D...

Note the applause.

So can we please stop pretending any kind of justice can be had from the ICC ? This is a joke in very bad taste.

Yeah, Africans are also complaining that there are too many Africans among the prosecuted. But it's not like there's an alternative. Either we have ICC and at least some war criminals get prosecuted or we have nothing. Take your pick :/

> ICC has no jurisdiction in the United States.

ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Afghanistan after it's accession to the Rome Statute.

> Imagine European idealists prosecuting Clinton, Bush and Obama for "war crimes"?

The Prosecutor of the ICC is Gambian (the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of Gambia), and the Deputy Prosecutor is Canadian, so you should have no fear of European idealists...

Why not?

Why give up sovereignty?

In the interests of a functional global order where everyone is held to the same standard?

It's very hard to claim the moral high ground when you are not willing to be subject to the same rules as everyone else.

everyone is held to the same standard

When has this ever happened in the history of mankind? Never, it is just a pipe dream.

Bigger, stronger countries set rules/standards for others and exceptions for themselves. That is how it works, whether we like it or not.

Never in the history of mankind have we had the ability to go halfway around the world in one day, or hold a conversation with someone halfway around the world with mere seconds of latency.

Never in the history of mankind have we had weapons capable of annihilating a city with one shot.

Never in the history of mankind have we accessed enough energy and matter to change the balance of the global atmospheric gas concentrations.

This is a time in human history where "never in the history of mankind" things should be given serious consideration.

The things that you listed are scientific achievements. What I pointed out was human behavior, power struggles etc. These are two different things.

A Thousand years ago, various groups of humans were trying to control other groups of humans, with stronger groups setting rules and weaker groups following them. Today we're doing the same. A Thousand years from now, we'll likely be doing the same.

Unlikely. Because if we don't come up with an alternative strategy, there is insufficient incentive for the strong to refrain from using the things I just listed against the weaker groups---or the weaker groups to use them first, preemptively, on the assumption the strong cannot be trusted.

We go that road, and in a thousand years, we won't be doing much of anything because we'll be an extinct species.

That seems a likely outcome and a grim, if satisfying element of the Great Filter hypothesis. In the meantime idealism is generally suicidal. How many people cheered the Arab Spring, only to recoil in horror when the most predictable thing ever happened in its wake? We need to solve the problem of risking our own extinction, but if it isn’t clear yet, we need to do something new, not just volunteering to be hacked to death by the next strongman.

Not only am I skeptical that this will ever happen, a look at how the ICC actually works shows that it has no relation to any ideal of holding everyone to some standard. Just because someone created an organization called the International Criminal Court doesn't mean that it has any connection to fairness or that any reasonable nation ought to subordinate itself to them.

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