undefined | Better HN

0 pointsthemgt4mo ago0 comments

> So yeah, the clock ticked and now we’re in a new and exciting era for geopolitics and who knows what system will prevail in the end. What is certain is that the US abdicated their leadership.

In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the most prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the actions Trump's taken against the ICC:

What can the incoming Trump administration do? It could impose severe sanctions on the ICC judges and its prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, who engineered this debacle, by blocking their ability to transact business through our banking system, for example. It could threaten severe sanctions against any nation that arrested Netanyahu or Gallant pursuant to the ICC warrants. It could also display its contempt for the ICC by inviting the Israeli premier to the White House and Congress.

Furthermore, the Trump administration should take action against nations that are funding and supporting the ICC so generously. Some of the ICC’s largest financial benefactors, including Japan and the European Union nations, are also dependent on the United States for their security. Yet while asking Washington, D.C., to protect them, they finance a global institution that hamstrings our ability to do so. If Tokyo, for example, wants the United States to lead a new alliance to contain China, Trump can demand that Japan eliminate its subsidy for an international institution that seeks to undermine the American national sovereignty he was elected to restore.

There's a nearly straight through-line from the logic and approach to executive power Yoo helped architect under Bush and these attacks on the ICC under Trump. It's just that many have decided to bizarrely retcon the Bush administration into respected elder statesman instead of the lawless war criminals they were and are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-international-arrest-warrants...

0 comments

kergonath4mo ago

> In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the most prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the actions Trump's taken against the ICC

True. Trump did not appear suddenly out of nowhere and he’s only able to do what he does thanks to people who prepared for this and have been pushing us down the slope for the last couple of decades. Thanks for the quote, it’s important we remember this sort of things.

> It's just that many have decided to bizarrely retcon the Bush administration into respected elder statesman instead of the lawless war criminals they were and are.

I think that’s the fact that Bush is at least able to finish a sentence. But yeah, you’re right. It was the golden age of enhanced interrogation techniques by masked men in black in illegal prisons in foreign countries.

immibis4mo ago

I don't think that Trump himself really thinks all the things he's pushing for - I think most of it is coming from people who aren't him, and he's just the figurehead. It's not clear he's capable of understanding what he's doing, at this point, since he has dementia. I think the more emotional-outburst type stuff, like "You have 100% tariffs? We'll have 200% tariffs!" is him though.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse