With regard to Nuremberg ideas of law and sanctions against aggressive war, the U.S. government considers itself above all that. It’s a case of “now you see it, now you don’t”. If the U.S. decides to bomb somebody and wants to mention Nuremberg as a justification (or its equivalent like a charge of killing one’s own people), now you see it. If it decides its own officials can get away with aggression against Iraq, now you don’t.
The fact of the matter is that the U.S. government regards itself as a law unto itself. It is the supreme and only superpower, by virtue of which what it says, goes. And what it says is law, it also claims.
Man-made law or law made by government IS law, under this view (also called positive law, a mis-naming if I ever heard one). Since the government is now thought of as its officials, not as a set of rules or guides for their behavior (the Constitution being a mere scrap of paper), what Bush et al did is beyond reproach and sanction. The same goes for Obama. Even kings were held to the constraints of natural law. The Bush-Obama claims about law make them into literal gods on earth.
1:09 pm on August 22, 2013
