Gambian President Yahya Jammeh says he will “cut off the head” of any homosexual caught in his country.
It seems to me that the world wouldn’t or couldn’t sit back and let this happen, can it/would it? If he did start killing homosexuals, could anything be done about it in this day and age?
The world sat back as an Islamist militia committed genocide in Sudan, and as the Hutus did it in Rwanda. The world didn’t stand back as two dozen different warlords bickered over Somalia, and look what that got us: an ineffectual military intervention that resulted in a failed state.
The sad fact of the matter is the majority of Africa is composed of backwards, tribal oligarchies and there’s nothing the civilized world can do to change it short of re-colonizing the whole place. But that would be far too much work. Plus, the world kind of frowns on that sort of thing these days.
Well, if he no longer had diplomatic immunity and they caught him out of his country, then sure. But the reality is, how do they arrest him as it stands?
Didn’t we just sort of go into (invade, actually) Panama to get (arrest, actually) Noriega for violating our laws, while in his country? I’m not saying he wasn’t bad; but I think it’s a dangerous precedent to establish – that we have the right to go and get a sovereign citizen from another sovereign nation (their own), and bring them back here to try them for violating our laws during a period of time in which they never set foot on our soil.
Wikipedia says: “The Washington Post disclosed several rulings of the Office of Legal Counsel, issued shortly before the invasion, in regards to the U.S. armed forces being charged with making an arrest abroad. One ruling Interpreted the Executive Order against Assassination of Foreign Leaders, which prohibits the intentional killing of foreign leaders as suggesting that accidental killings would be acceptable foreign policy. Another ruling concludes that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the armed forces from making arrests without Congressional authorization, is effective only within the boundaries of the US, such that the military could be used as a police force abroad — for example, in Panama, to enforce a federal court warrant against Noriega.”
So, in answer to both DrDeth and the OP, I suppose it would be simple enough to just get the OLC to creatively “bend” the laws to suit the situation once again. There certainly seems to be ample precedent for it. :dubious:
He’s just another asshole dictator. He’ll have to stand in line if you want the world to Do Something About It, behind dozens of asshole dictators that are even worse than he is.
[sarcasm]No, you can’t hold an African country to western standards, that’s cultural imperialism.[/sarcasm]
Yeah, he’s hardly the biggest asshole amongst African leaders. That’s faint praise, but if we were to try to do anything, we might want to do something about the piece of shit in the country formerly known as Rhodesia.
Not that they have the power to do so, but on the principle implied in the OP the European Community (which considers all state executions barbaric) could arrest the US President and charge him with ‘crimes against humanity’, for condoning such executions.
This way lies madness.