Oh, it would have every right indeed. By all means, do demand.
What I’m saying is the US would still respond by a carefully worded communiqué to the British ambassador along the lines of “Ha ha, you’re funny. Fuck off. Say that again, we’ll cut your dick off.”
The first purpose of government being to safeguard its citizens, handing over said citizens to be “enhanced interrogated” by the next country over on their say-so is kind of a non-starter. Besides, nobody reacts well to peremptory threats, even less so when as **Yog **notes they’re threats that can’t possibly be backed up. The US might be mighty and rich, might be funnelling a truly retarded amount of said wealth into their war machine, but it is still far from able to take on the entire world at once.
If they could, they’d already have.
So, basically, your proposal would a) have zero effect and b) piss the entire world off at y’all. More than is already the case, even !
(Oh, and BTW, the US is giving sanctuary to IRA terrorists, financiers and gun runners. Or was at the height of the Troubles at any rate.)
Ah, yes. And I suppose if you’re not a criminal, you shouldn’t have any issue with cops searching your house at 3 A.M. and listening in on your phone calls just to make sure ? After all, you don’t have anything to hide, do you ? Then what’s the problem ?
So, the US was evil and had no authority to govern when we funded, sheltered and trained counter-revolutionary Cubans and Nicaraguan Contras? Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention members of the Taliban in the 80s while they were fighting the Russians.
Let me guess – they weren’t “terrorists”, they were “freedom fighters”.
You agree that terrorists are evil, no? You agree that governments should not harbor them or allow them quarter? So why wouldn’t you (Canada) cooperate in the UN for a resolution to root them out?
And to the other poster, yes we helped the Taliban in the 80s. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and the whole thing. Maybe we made mistakes. I’m talking about today and our fight against terrorism.
Well, you were the one crying about your civil liberties. You agree that terrorists are evil, no ? You agree that governments should root them out ? So why wouldn’t you just cooperate, let your phone be tapped, give your DNA for the database, hand over your guns, let your home car & person be searched daily, carry a personal locator at all times etc… ? Cause that would sure help locate them terrorists.
But if you think it’s bullshit to do it at home, at the behest of your own government, why would you expect people from other countries not to think it’d be bullshit to let a foreign power do it to them ?
No, I don’t agree. They can just write themselves a memo saying it’s okay, the way the US did regarding torture.
I’m okay with cooperating with the UN. I’m not okay with the US violating the sovereignty of other nations if the same goals can be accomplished by curtailing the rights of its own citizens. Now I don’t believe this to be the case, I think the Bush Administration’s penchant for spying had more to do with politics than national security, but if those are the only two options, then I’d prefer your inconvenience to mine.
My uncle has a sign in his office: “You ask credit, we no give, you mad. We give credit, you no pay, we mad. Better you mad.”
Better you mad.
As an aside, I wouldn’t support this hypothetical UN resolution unless one of the conditions is that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Gonzales, Yee, and a few others whose names I’ve happily forgotten were turned over to the ICC to be tried for their crimes.
We’ve also funded groups in Iran that our own State Department officially called terrorists. And our military has done various things that can only be described as terrorism, unless you actually buy the idea that “terrorist is what the big army calls the little army”. Again; we are not against terrorism, we’ve never actually opposed it, there is and never was any “War on Terror”. We just object to the other guy’s terrorists.
Not a moral authority. It stems from being the most powerful and having no qualms about using the military. No morality required.
We lied about weapons of mass destruction and went after Iraq who was not sponsoring terrorism. We killed a lot of innocent people and blew a few beautiful cities apart.
It was not our finest hour.
Yes, all stellar examples of the American right’s inability to tell right from wrong (you forgot Bush’s use of torture), and all reasons why I wouldn’t take their claims as to who does and does not have the moral authority to do something seriously. That an American right-winger thinks not submitting to the US’s whims is grounds for invasion disgusts me, but it doesn’t surprise me.
I reject your simplistic analysis, especially since a number of Americans have (or had) grossly mistaken beliefs about terrorist locations, including the persistent notion that the 9/11 hijackers either entered the U.S. through Canada or were at some point safely based in Canada. People who cling to these beliefs despite significant counter-evidence are pretty easy to find. We could trust that American leaders, advised by professional intelligence experts, are bound to work with verified facts but… I don’t want to, really. Stay out of my country unless you come in peace. Thanks.