An interesting example to be sure, but even more interesting is whether or not we paid any compensation for bombing the Chinese embassy. IIRC, there were deaths involved.
Anybody know?
Correct. Assuming the Sudanese followed their own laws, that would be a legal act of war.
See – war isn’t illegal.
If we did, it wasn’t because the Chinese sued us.
John: Yes.
Thanks.
Looks there was a settlement outside the legal system of either country, which makes sense.
If the President has the power to negate the citizenship rights of an American person, what stops him from negating the rights of an American corporation?
No, it’s a recognition that there’s a difference between international conduct under the rubric of war, and normal internal interactions between government and people.
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Um, war IS violent. So the answer to my question “Yes, the answer is to use violence”.
War is controlled violence, intended to effect the political aims of the warring party.
Even if that was true (and it isn’t, war is hardly limited to that), so what? It basically boils down to an inadvertent assertion that if the company wanted redress it should have said “screw the courts; send assassins.”
Yes, I think that’s the big problem. The U.S., along with other democratic states, should be aiming for a world in which disputes are resolved peacefully. Using war to further your own aims, and not offering compensation to innocent victims of your war actions, sends a message to the rest of the world – and it’s not a message that the U.S. likes to have sent back to it when Americans suffer. As St Paul said, “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
Again, that’s pretty common in countries ruled by laws. Lots of bad things happen for which you can’t find solace in the court system.
Now, if you were to say that the U.S. government, no matter what the court says, should apologize and pay these people back, I’d agree.
They’re Africans, duh. :rolleyes:
OK, so the Sudanese can blow up a bunch of our darkies. They’re all drug dealers anyway. Sounds fair to me. 
Couple of pretty gigantic assumptions in that post. How do you confidently declare that the factory and its owners were “innocent?” There was reliable intelligence information that they were not, and the then-president relied upon it in making his decision to attack. Where did “innocent” come from?
If they WERE innocent, I suspect the US would have paid compensation. This decision doesn’t prevent the US from offering compensation; it says the courts aren’t the route to get it… the political process is.
And I think there’s a gigantic assumption in this post.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the decision, and the remarks made by Bricker, but does the location of the attack have relevance to whether it is a political question and therefore, the court must/should defer to the decision made by one of the other two co-equal branches of government?
In other words, is it less of a political question had this attack taken place on U.S. soil, or does no political question exist at all had the attack taken place on U.S. soil?
The strong do what they will the weak what they must. No one cares much if at all for Sudanese factory owners and Sudanese in general and there is little they can do about it, unlike China who can cause a lot of discomfort.
My assumption is that they were not innocent, and while it is an assumption, it’s based on the intelligence information and the then-president’s decision, which is owed great deference.
Your contrary assumption is based on… what?
Yes, the courts have no jurisdiction outside the US, so the government has no judicial means to address the problem if it is not on US soil. If it is on US soil, the government will use the courts rather than bombs.
Now, if we’re talking about a US ally with a functioning government, we certainly would normally go through their court system rather than just bombing an ally. A case in point is what we’re doing in Pakistan with the drones. Pakistan is an ally, but they have little or no government control over the tribal regions, and so we have no recourse in Pakistani courts. If there were a known terrorist cell in Karachi, we would expect the Pakistani government (with our help if needed), to take care of the situation, not our predator drones.
Another argument for violence. That sort of line is favored by people who never expect to deal with the backlash, or to have the sharp end of it applied to them.