General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is the reason the GLBT Community doesn't support Bradley Manning? [View all]sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)tried to prosecute Bush's torturers eg, Spain had jurisdiction in that case and started the process after waiting until after the election in 2008 to give the new administration the opportunity to do the right thing themselves. But when this president announced that we would be 'moving forward' from the past, note he did not say there were no crimes committed, just that it would be better for us to move forward, Spain began the process of starting the prosecutions of six of Bush's administration officials.
We now know from the Wikileaks cables that the Obama administration pressured the Spanish Court personally not to go ahead with those prosecutions. So they are on hold, NOT dismissed, but on hold.
No one will go against the US. We have ways of punishing those who do. We would withhold funding from the UN eg and that would be disastrous for them.
The bottom line is that we are far too powerful for anyone to take on so it is up to us. The UN would go after Bush in a minute if they had the support of this country. But we have made it clear now with a Democratic administration as well as the Republicans, that the US will never hold its own war criminals accountable. There is a price being paid for this position however. We have lost our moral authority.
China and other nations are now using this against us. Eg, when the State Dept had the gall to admonish China and Venezuala for 'human rights violations' both countries responded with a list of the egregious human rights crimes committed by this country in Iraq and elsewhere and basically told us to go Cheney ourselves. We still have the power and money to intimidate people, but much less than we used to have. Those illegal wars have weakened this country both morally and economically and we haven't even managed to win any of them.
As for the legality question, I pointed this out in another comment, no one is obligated to abide by bad laws, something WE the US made clear in Nuremberg. To make that argument, that once something is made 'legal' no matter how bad, it must be respected, is to say that the Germans should not have been prosecuted as the horrors they committed were all perfectly legal.