On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >The point of the change is to instate some standard, however tenuous
> >and hypocritical, of international law. One can not easily achieve
> >that by exempting its chief violators to begin with."
>
> Can someone explain why presidents of the U.S. aren't held to this
> same standard?
Ah Doug, you're so Old Europe. You think law is something that applies to everyone, otherwise it isn't law. Hitchens subscribes to the halfway is better than none school. He thinks a world in which the enemies of the US get tried and killed is better than one in which no one gets tried and killed. He thinks that's halfway to a just world, rather than halfway away from it. Since this naturally strengthens the empire, I can only conclude he thinks that's a necessary stage on the road towards world government. Which I guess will arrive when the US rules everything and then gets overthrown by a democracy movement from within. It'll be like Rome, only without the bad parts and the decline part.
It's all very idealistic, you see. It just looks bloody minded and unfair when people like you insist on taking the small-minded 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 year view. Centuries from now, they'll be thanking Rumself and Hitching. Just like today like we're happy the Reformation happened, even though at the time it looked like the work of a bunch of bloody minded fundamentalist nuts who set us back a century or two.
But of course you wouldn't understand. You don't have any faith. To understand the magnificence of this project you have to leave that stunted "realism" (yechh, feh, how *kissingerian*) that you're so attached to behind.
Dare to believe! In the Cunning of History!
<\sarcasm>
Michael