I believe that the US would get first crack at trying someone for a crime. If nothing was done or the international court felt like it was a whitewash, then action could be taken.
This seems to be more an issue for politicians than for servicement. Suppose Laos and Cambodia wanted to try Henry Kissenger for war crimes; the US believes that no such war crimes were commited and have no intention of ever conducting any type of investigation. The court might decide that they want to try Kissenger and make an ugly political mess out of the whole thing.
That’s my take on the real reason the US is objecting to this. And having seen some of the votes coming out of the UN General Assembly I’d be hard pressed to voluntarily submit myself to the rulings of some international bodies.
pld then why were we so insistent that Milosevich be held and tried the way he was? I’m seeing an inconsistency here. If the concern is we wish our people to be handled w/our rules, it should follow then that the same should be true of other people, and their country’s rules. BUt w/Milosevich, we were part of the team to insist on an international trial (as we were in Nuremburg)
You could argue that the potential to be held for three weeks without charge is preferable to the possibility of being held until the end of some arbitrary conflict…and by the military…and with no access to a lawyer…
Telemark,
The ICC would only be used for crimes commited from the date of founding onwards. they will not retroactively instigate proceedings.
The court will only act when a government is unable or unwilling to do so.
Don’t think my ire is reserved for the U.S. alone. Russia and China need a good kicking for their abstensions.
Here’s a good question.
If Bin Laden was willing to submit for trial under the ICC would the U.S.'s stance on the ICC change?
(and this is not a Bush bashing thread. I may think Junior is leading America in to a moral sledgepool, but thats neither here nor there ;))
I don’t understand why anyone would view this remark as snide. It is a generally unbiased statement of fact - Europe has formed a variety of unions, to the point now of sharing the same currency. They are moving towards a unified legal system, etc. Europeans, we can thus probably assume, are clearly more comfortable with ‘putting themselves under the power of others’. Others here certainly doesn’t mean ‘other countries’; it means the type of supranational bodies we see in Europe.
The US, however resists any move that would give any country or body authority over it. I recall my high school teacher noting that the US had vetod a number of human rights bills in the UN precisely for that reason.
Neither side is inherently good/bad or right/wrong. Both sides are the result of history - Europe has learned that allowing any one country to get too powerful is bad; thus the move towards unity. The US hasn’t had to worry about bad neighbors next door, thus the relative obsession with going it alone.
I disagree. There’s no way either of us knew what was “certainly meant” since neither of us wrote the comment, which could have been interpreted in more than one way; I read it as a snide comment, you didn’t. Since Osiris has kindly clarified I’m happy to accept his/her version.
when we consider the part of the quote you missed out…
It’s bad because it means potentially innocent people can be held for three weeks without being charged with anything, with the likelihood that they’ll suffer mistreatment during their incarceration. Not being charged simply means they are suspected of doing something - what are sufficient reasons for suspicion? “Acting suspiciously” can cover all kinds of behaviours. It’s subjective and very easily open to abuse. So people who are “acting suspiciously” can be held for up to three weeks with no concrete evidence that they are guilty of anything at all.
And for the record, I also read "The US has never been happy about placing itself under the power of others whereas Europe has certainly learned to be somewhat comfortable with it. " as snide, but am happy to accept Osiris didn’t mean it that way.
Francesca, I was not missing out on the quote of ‘beatings’. I specifically answered that in my post above. And I repeat, suspects in Japan are most definitely treated better than in the US - note I am specifically referring to beatings, etc. Quite frankly, police brutality isn’t an issue in Japan. Not saying that Japan’s judicial system is perfect - no country can say that - nor that it is better or worse than any other. But at least as far as brutality is concerned - a non-issue.
At least in my hometown in the States, it seemed like half the school bullies went on to be come cops. And of course they continued to bully, only this time with a gun and badge. Swell.
The reason why I am asking why ‘three weeks without being charged’ is ‘bad’ - is because I suspect it is ‘bad’ because it is longer than the US; i.e., the US model is supposed to be the benchmark for the rest of the world. If three weeks is too long, what about two weeks? One week? Five days? For better or worse, Japan has decided it needs three weeks to ensure they have the right person. Seems a bit long to me, but then again, in the States it takes twice that long to get documentation back from DoMV.
As I noted above, the ‘likelihood of being mistreated’ is a non-issue. I believe you are far more likely to get mistreated by US police than Japanese police. Again, not saying the entire judicial/criminal system is better/worse.
And the devil’s advocate would say that it is good because potentially guilty people are kept off the street until the police are satisfied that they either do or don’t have the right guy. The same people complaining about the three weeks are probably the same ones bashing US police when the have a suspect in custody and then let him walk because they have no grounds to keep him longer. ‘They let him walk out, right from under their nose!’, and there is much rending of garments.
Note that it is up to three weeks, not mandatory three weeks; three weeks is actually fairly rare.
It is actually an interesting issue. Obviously we can’t make blanket statements based on the arbitrary decision on the number of days (in Japan I think it is actually 23 days). But, compared to the US, perhaps one could say that Japan would rather keep an innocent person detained for three weeks than risk having a guilty person go free. Individuals as a group giving up a bit of freedom for the better of the whole. And perhaps you could say that, compared to Japan, the US would rather let a guilty person go free than keep an innocent person detained. Individual freedom is more important than the well-being of the group at large. Obviously this is really oversimplifying things, but I hope you see my point.
Interesting. What I (a man, as was the original Osiris) was specifically thinking of was the Euro money (as mentioned earlier, thank you) where power was given over on setting interest rates and such, as well as the European Union. But the ‘somewhat’ was referring to the fact that the EU members all have veto power (much like UN Security Council) plus the UK and Denmark have heretofore opted out of the Euro.
Dragon Ash, I remember back when I used to be an unquestioning Japanophile, I said a lot of the things you’ve just said now. Come and live here for a while, maybe you’ll grow out of it.
Japan has a 99% conviction rate. This is half because prosecutors decide not to press charges if they’re not 100% sure they can convince a judge of guilt (no juries), in which case an innocent person has had to spend three weeks in prison with daily interrogation. You apparently think this is no big deal. The other half is due to the fact that confessions taken without a lawyer present are admissible as evidence in court. The police are completely unsupervised, and there is little, if anything, to keep them from using extra “persuasion” techniques to get suspects to say what they want to hear.
If the police aren’t capable of investigating a suspect before an arrest is made, they’re not doing a particularly good job.
And Andy, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe we’re currently at war with Japan. In any case, US military personnel held in US military prisons have most, if not all, of the same rights as civilians, including access to lawyers, IIRC. If some of our military dopers could clarify this, I would greatly appreciate it.
Dragon Ash - I understand your point. I think where we differ is that you find three weeks an acceptable length of time for a suspect to be held and I do not. Not because it’s longer or shorter than the US or any other country, but because from my point of view it’s an unacceptable length of time. As Sublight said - the police ought to be able to do enough investigating before the arrest that a three week interrogation isn’t necessary.
Actually, no. I would rather that a person for whom there is not sufficient evidence to charge him be set free earlier rather than later. It does mean that a guilty suspect may walk free until such time as there is enough evidence and yes, they may present a danger. But I am more comfortable with that than the prolonged incarceration of innocent suspects on subjuctively defined grounds of suspicion.
However, since this is rather a hijack of the OP, what’s say we agree to disagree?
The threatened pull-out of US troops in Bosnia is a smoke screen. They have been used successfully, and essentially without incident to keep the peace in Bosnia under UN’s Ad Hoc Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s jurisdiction for years (1994?).
The powers of this tribunal are considered to be are far broader than the ICC’s. So the US is using the ICC as a pretext to withdraw from the Balkans.
Of course, peacekeeping troops in Bosnia are less likely to be involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity than troops involved in the war of agression in Afghanistan.