[extropy-chat] Treaties ratified by the US Senate

[Mike Lorrey]

--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/25/05, Brett Paatsch wrote:
> > Mike's post provides a link to the US Constitution. There is gold
> > in that thar document and almost certainly at least part of the
> solution
> > to what ails us. And, like the UN Charter, it is remarkably
> concise.
> > 
> 
> 
> Mike's post talks about legal theory and ignores what actually
> happens in practice.

Absolutely false, Bill, you apparently did not read it carefully. I
have cited the application of several treaties to changes in US law, as
well as the Amistad case as a sterling example of conflicts between
foreign treaty and US law being resolved by the court.

> This paragraph struck me as a really big get out clause
> 
> > In this respect, a treaty with another nation does not prevent the
> > United States government from choosing to act to enforce or protect
> the
> > rights of its citizens if that nation is violating them, because
> the US
> > Constitution's Bill of Rights is clearly superior to any treaty the
> > Senate may ratify, nor does it prevent the US gov't from enforcing
> any
> > other provision of the US Constitution against the claimed
> > interpretation of any treaty.
> >
> 
> This clause is very useful for the US. In practice it means that the
> US just has to engineer some 'incident' and whoopee! they can ignore
> the treaty and invade.

It takes two to tango, Bill. WRT Panama, it took Noriega both declaring
war against the US AND killing a US military officer to cause invasion.
Neither event was 'engineered' by the US.

WRT the Grenada invasion, American medical students were put under
house arrest and essentially were being held as hostages by the Cuban
backed military junta. The US didn't 'engineer' them doing that,
either. The island had been getting infiltrated by Cuban communists for
years at the behest of the Soviet Union so the USSR could build a
bomber base there, because Grenada sits astride the main shipping lane
to the US Gulf Coast from the horn of Africa.

Puerto Rico invasion? When did this happen? Puerto Rico has been a
territory of the US since it was ceded by Spain. Do you mean the
Spanish-American War? While the USS Maine explosion was certainly a
pretext, freeing Cuba and other Spanish colonies was not a bad thing.
Spain still practiced slavery in its colonies, and our liberation of
Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Phillipines (which all became US
territories) aided in each nations development, and each was free to
pursue its own destiny (despite the efforts of some minority insurgency
groups) which is why Cuba became independent early on, the Phillipines
did so after WWII, and Puerto Rico chose to remain a US territory.

The Haiti action also involved forces from three other carribean
nations and was requested by the duly elected president of that country
in response to events that the US had no involvement in.

I am sure some websites keep extensive lists of US 'crimes', all of
which are tinged in stalinist or trotskyist communist disinformation.

The 19th century US mistreatment of native Americans (and native
American unwillingness to assimilate into US culture) is well
documented and is, like early US slavery, a drum that is regularly
beaten today by the radical left.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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