tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:4 tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:4 tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:4 tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 Todd tod Jul 21 23:4 tod Jul 21 23:48:30 2004 T44 responses total.
The US should join the world court and participate in and be subject to international justice. If the authority is abused, suitable actions can be taken then.
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Lets stay out of any worled organization that can punish us for our good deeds, or at least our attempts to make things better. The only world government I want is the one with the U.S. of A. in charge. we are a minority in this world, adn could easily be outvoted by many other countries.
And that's necessarily a bad thing?
A World Government with the US of A in charge, potentially means with the President of the USA in charge. Dubya in charge of the world. He's already proved himself too short-sighted when it comes to his own country, how would that work out with the rest of the world? I don't think having oe country in charge of a world govt is going to help. It's hard for any one country to comprehend how other countries work. And I think the USA is one of the least equipped countries to form a "World Government"
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By staying out of the International Court we lose international support for furthering accusations we have against other nations. This is a much greater loss than any improbable finding against the USA.
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I have mixed feelings about this. I don't like to see the US thumbing its nose at the world, but US courts do provide significantly more protections than courts in various other places. I don't think I can make a blanket "a world court would be good" or "a world court would be bad" statement without some careful analysis of how the court would operate.
Maybe bru wants to be king of the world organization.
A world govt with USA in charge with a a few leaders like Bush and the whole world can go back to the stone age.
If we do ever develop a world government, it will certainly be multilateral -- a power-sharing setup -- and not run by any single national government. And if it ever does develop into a single government, it would very likely be administered by a multinational corporation, for better or for worse. (Probably one created solely for the purpose.)
With its current hegemony, the US can chose to do whatever it feels like. Well, almost. It can arm-twist the UN into sanctioning its actions and if that fails it can still go ahead. Who's going to oppose them on the ground? No one!! They can quote UN resolutions when it suits them and reject the UN's authority when the UN does not approve their actions. As a developed nation and the world's largest economy, they have sufficient power to arm-twist smaller/thired-world nations. And there isn't much the smaller nations can do about it. With its troops almost all over the globe, the US can send them in to almost any part to *liberate* nations and do *peacekeeping*. Who's to stand up against them? No one. The only question is, how long does this hegemony over world affairs lasts?
Until China comes into her own (as the expression goes).
At which point it would be nice to have developed some precident for power sharing among world governments.
re: "#13 (sj2):. . . As a developed nation and the world's largest economy, they have sufficient power to arm-twist smaller/thired-world nations. And there isn't much the smaller nations can do about it." The proof being our ability to control the actions of N. Korea.
North Korea? Never heard of it!!!
We could easily drum up some alarmist "evidence" aboun N. Korea, just like we did with Iraq, and then invade. However, our current President seems more worried about possible weapons in Iraq than real weapons in N. Korea. Hey, I didn't vote for him...
I doubt if we would ever invade any country that we thought capable of seriously defending itself. Thus NK is out.
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That was this, this is now. If we were interested in disarming a country that really had the means to do us severe damage, why hit on Iraq and not China or North Korea?
cuz we gotsta git the fyooul first.
Good point.
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Re #20: we were attacked first in the case of Japan, and an ally was under attack in the case of Germany. Iraq was attacking no one when we most recently invaded. (How quickly - or conveniently - people forget there is a difference.)
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Note that I wrote "when we most recently invaded". Iraq has not *invaded* Israel - or do you consider Clinton's tomahawking of Iraq an "invasion" too? That would mean we "invaded" Iraq twice without provocation.
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So, where they an "invasion" of Iraq (as tod is claiming for Iraq's scuds)?
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Whats to gain from attacking N. Korea? Millions of impoverished and hungry civilians!!!
Really! We'd have to accidentally extend the invasion into Russia or China to get enough oil out of it to actually justify the expense.
I think the whole thing boils down to business. If you need your corporations to have access to bigger markets and make more money, you would've to sacrifice more lives, civilian and military. When the British went about fighting Indian (as in South Asia) kings, were they protecting Britain from some threat of being invaded? Or were they liberating people? No!! They were paving way for British companies to get into India and make money. The same's the story here. Ofcourse, in the process lots of British soldiers fought and lost their lives. What were they told?? That they were patriots fighting to defend the Union Jack?
I don't actually know why Bush invaded Iraq. His stated reasons were bogus. The theory that it was to open opportunities for American corporations is certainly plausible. The general nastiness of the government there would have been a real factor - as it ensured that they didn't have a lot of allies. It also explains why Bush wants to keep the UN out. We went to all this trouble to open opportunities for American corporations, not German and Indian ones. I'm not sure I entirely buy that explanation, but it almost has to have been at least a significant plus factor.
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re#1: Where in the US Constitution does it suggest that the federal government can even think about surrendering sovereign rights that are only loaned to it in the first place by the individual citizens? The federal government doesn't have the authority to enter into such an agreement in the first place.
That is why you get national legislatures to ratify a treat/accord. Well ... mostly, unless the executive can find a loophole in the law that gives it unilateral rights to sign treaty/accord without getting approval from the house of representatives like the recent UK-US extradition treaty??
Btw, the loaned-the-rights-to-the-government thing sounds good in theory. If you went to contest a law/regulation on that basis, I am sure you can dispute almost every law and end up being an outcast?
re#39: Or have it overturned. It only took one tired old lady who refused to move to the back of the bus...
(A minor quibble to #39: The Senate ratifies treaties; the House of Representatives has no role in treating wwith foreign powers.)
Re #42, By House of Representatives, I did not mean the US HoR but generically the HoR of a country. In India, the parliament ratifies a treaty. It consists of an publicly elected lower house, the Lok Sabha and an upper house, the Rajya Sabha, that is elected by an electoral college.
Ah. It's different in the US. There are two chambers, but only one ratifies treaties. That chamber, the United States Senate, also approves appointments made by the President. Originally, Senators were elected by the State legislatures. Now, they are elected by direct vote.
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