A top Bush administration official on Friday said the European Union, the United Nations and other international entities increasingly are using international law to challenge U.S. powers to reject treaties and protect itself from attack."International law is being used as a rhetorical weapon against us," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former federal appellate judge, said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative policy group.
Chertoff cited members of the European Parliament in particular as harboring an "increasingly activist, left-wing and even elitist philosophy of law" at odds with American practices and interests.
But he said the same pattern could be seen in the policies of the United Nations and other international bodies.
"What we see here is a vision of international law that if taken aggressively would literally strike at the heart of some of our basic fundamental principals — separation of powers, respect for the Senate's ability to ratify treaties and … reject treaties," Chertoff said.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Cherthoff Suggests International Law Is a War Threat
Whoa, bucko, don't start going even loopier on us. I wonder, how does Cherthoff think the rest of the entire world feels about American influence on their domestic laws, cultures, societies, rights to privacy, etc.? International law is a threat when what you want is to be able to act in the international sphere in any way you see fit as The Sovereign.
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Yes, by definition, the supremacy of international law is a threat to the nation-state and threatens it with obsolescence as well as the potentially eliminating longstanding laws unique to a particual region.
But without a participatory body to make such laws and without any means to enforce any laws such a body makes, any nation-state can tell that body to go jump in a lake.
So any international law would either be unenforceable, or worse imposed on whole regions not signatory to any treaty.
Even now in it's cuurent form supportng the sovreignty of nation-states it slows pursuit of criminals and terror suspects and represents an opportunity for failed states to be breeding grounds for all forms of lawlessness.
If it were in the control of those with anti-american interest it could indeed become a weapon created under the pretext of limiting a strong state and then converted to supress the entire planet.
I know what you are trying to say about the irony of such a statement, but this issue is about more than one administration engaging in a pre-emptive invasion against a dictator. It's about what voice the American people would have in such a system and what we would stand to lose as a result.
Frankly short of currency, trade, environment, extradition and cooperative capture of lawbreakers I'd prefer as little international law as possible.
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