> Maybe so, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Chomskyan left
> is correct all the time. Mexico, Canada, the EU and Japan
> succeeded in forcing the U.S. to back down over permanent
> immunity for peacekeepers
How is that a "back-down"? From reading the Brazilian press today, I got the impression that this was like the back-down where a robber breaks into your house and runs off with the TV, but grudginly leaves a note promising to consider returning it in a year's time.
The Canadians also sounded rather nonplussed. On friday the UN ambassadors of New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and Canada co-signed a letter to the secretary-general disputing the Security Council's right to grant such immunity; the letter then grovels about the US being such a nice army it would never be prosecuted, so could it please back down? Not exactly the sort of thing people who just won a major concession go about doing... To achieve this "temporary" immunity for its peacekeepers is in fact a major victory for the US - there would have to be a pretty miraculous change in international affairs, I take it, for them to have the immunity revoked next year.
Incidentally, US peacekeepers' exposure to the ICC before the immunity was granted was zero (Also note that the US sents only a token presence to most peacekeeping forces; the manpower is usually recruited from third world countries - which is telling as to the political, rather than military, reasons for the request of immunity):
http://www.iccnow.org/html/USexposuretoICCchart.pdf
The insistence on immunity, then, is from considerations of hegemony, possible future exposure (meaning: anticipated war crimes) and was probably an effort to shoot down the court outright. This is precisely the sort of behaviour which Chomsky and his acolytes have for a long time attributed to the US.
Thiago Oppermann
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