This is jks, btw; Doug suggested I change to yahoo as hotmail is being difficult.
Carrol says: Were the critics of the Nuremberg trials cynics?
I answer: Not at all. There were problems with Nuremburg, "victor's justice," and the like. Though I think the proceedings were ultimatrely defensible. The Nazi leadership did violate international law. They also received a ton of due process. Not all were convicted, btw. Von Schirach, if I recall, got off, among others. The conviction and execution of Steicher was a disgrace, though.The hypocrisy of the whole affair was (as the Indian judges observed), it was what you call a selective [prosecution. The thought of bringing the American and British leadership to bar for, e.g., Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Dresden, was nevfer even formulated.
Carrol says:
Many of us argued against the Spanish attempt to try Pinochet. Many very respectable legal thinkers objected to the Nuremberg trials. Those trials, the kidnapping of Noriega, the trial of Milosevic, the attempted kidnapping of Pinochet,
I say: As I recall, he was detained in England subject to a lawful extradition request. No one invaded or even snuck into Chile and dragged him out of his home (as the Israelis did to Eichmann--you got a problem with that, Carrol?). When it was determined that he was unfit to stand trial, he was sent home. Whats' the problem?
I don't think these are on a par. Nuremberg was the judgment of victors on the vanquished, although there the vanquished were guilty of international crimes. Noriega was indeed kidnapped in an imperial adventure by the hemispheric superpower, something not at all comparable to Spain, which is no kind of power, pursuing Pinochet through ordijnary legal process. Whether he could be lawfully prosecuted for violation of Spanish law in killing and torturing Spanish citizens in Chile--that was the issue, right?--is a close question, but it's not an insane notion, nor arrogant of Spain to give it a try. It's not comparable to the US claim that Noriega violated US narcotics laws extraterritorially--i think he was convicted under the drug conspiracy statute--because there i9sn't even the jurisdictional hook that Spain had, that Pinochet had killed Spanish citizens. The Noriega claim was just that N, in Panama, had violated US drug laws. It's pretty outrageous.N's not the only case. T! he! re was another one a while back where the US feds kidnapped a Mexican drug dealer who had tortured and murdered a DEA agent in Mexico, and brought him to the US for trial. That's also different from Pinochet: there was no pretense of extradition; it was baldfaced kidnapping. But hey,.as Condi says, we're special.
The trial of Milosovic is in some ways the most problematic, since Milo is simply accused to of doing harm to whay were then hsi own subjects on what he claimed was a his own territory at a time when there was no competing sovereign authority, and if there is a legal basis for action against it, it is presumably under Yugoslav way,w hich I am sure forbids conspiracy to murder and such like. Milo is a sack of shit, and deserves the worst strictures the law can impose on him. But I'm a boring bourgeois stickler for norms and procedures, and I'd like to see it done by thw law instead of this charade. Which doesn't mean I'm going tos ign up on the Committe to Defend Milo; but I will say that I remain to be convinced that the court he's facing has any jurisdiction.
Carrol continues:
the criminalizing of the Taliban leadership,
Me; More sacks of shit, but Carrol has a point.
Carrol again:
are all a return to savagery that most civilized tribes and nations transcended centuries or millenia ago.
Me:, well I'm a Westphalian realist too, sort of surprised to see that you are Carrol. But the norms go back to the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, and only held, to the extent they did, among the Great and Medium Powers.
jks
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