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What Would People Think?

Friday, August 19, 2005

America Acting Like A Bully In A School Yard

Hypocrisy at work in the Bush Administration. Again:

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Aug. 18 - Three years ago the Bush administration began prodding countries to shield Americans from the fledgling International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was intended to be the first permanent tribunal for prosecuting crimes like genocide.
The United States has since cut aid to some two dozen nations that refused to sign immunity agreements that American officials say are intended to protect American soldiers and policy makers from politically motivated prosecutions.
To the Bush administration, the aid cuts are the price paid for refusing to offer support in an area where it views the United States, with its military might stretched across the globe, as being uniquely vulnerable.
But particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to 12 nations that have been penalized, the cuts are generating strong resentment at what many see as heavy-handed diplomacy, officials and diplomats in seven countries said.
More than that, some Americans are also beginning to question the policy, as political and military leaders in the region complain that the aid cuts are squandering good will and hurting their ability to cooperate in other important areas, like the campaigns against drugs and terrorism.

See, cuz we only believe in the rule of law when it benefits us. When we encounter a court made to fight genocide and think that it could hold Americans responsible....well, golly rule of law is no good then. Better we push around our neighbors to the South. Of course, as the article explains, we don't do the same to Western European countries like Germany, which have also refused to sing our immunity agreement. We only punish countries we can push around.

Schoolyard bully ethic at work. What, if an American general was sent before a court, would we call the nation that sent them a "tattle-tale"?

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