Un-effing believable

Updated Just un-effing believable. PastPeak tips us to the news that the US Coast Guard, declaring that "the president has authority to secure the borders of the United States ... anywhere in the world," is patrolling the waters off Ecuador, thousands of miles from our coastline, with the support of the US Navy, and

arresting foreign nationals trying to leave their own countries.

Coast Guard crews have blocked at least 37 Ecuadoran boats and detained more than 4,575 suspected illegal migrants over the past four years, records show. Then, over the past two years, they've sunk a dozen emptied migrant boats they deemed "unseaworthy" - setting them ablaze and firing on them with their .50-caliber guns.

This is part of a new "anti-terrorism" - actually anti-immigrant - strategy called "pushing our borders out."

Pushing them out to where? Is there a limit to our reach? Is there a point beyond which we can't go? What a foolish notion.

U.S. courts have affirmed a right to enforce U.S. laws abroad if crimes affect the United States.

What, you thought there would be a different answer? Of course not. Our law is universal. We can enforce our law anywhere, anytime, we think we might be affected. Everyone else in the world has to mold their laws and the procedures and their behavior to our desires and needs.

If foreign armed forces stopped U.S. boats in this way, "we'd call it an act of war," said John Pike, director of the Washington think tank Global Security. "There is no world government to enforce international law. It's always been the case that the strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must."

Of course it's an act of war, a clear violation of international law and national sovereignty. In fact, didn't the War of 1812 revolve around a very similar issue, that of the navy of one nation stopping and boarding the ships of the others on the high seas in order to enforce its domestic laws?

Hey, but that's history, old stuff, who cares about that or principles or consistency or law or respect for sovereignty or any of the rest of the liberal hand-wringing crap? We're the cops of the world, boys, we're the cops of the world! So up against the wall and spread 'em! Because who's going to stop us?

But again, again, again - this is not something invented by George Bush. This is not a new thing. It's part of our imperial heritage. I'm going to include another long quote from myself to make the point. It's from the print version of Lotus for May, 1992. What raised it was the US demand that Libya extradite to the US two suspects in a 1988 airliner bombing.

Just who the flaming hell do we think we are?

If I recall correctly, it's believed the bomb was placed on the plane in Germany. The jet crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland. Clearly both Germany and the UK have a basis to call for extradition. But we don't. No crime was committed on US soil, no US law was broken. By what right do we demand extradition?

Instead of answering that basic question, political and legalistic gobbledygook is being strewn around like seed in a field, all of it boiling down to a single tenet: US law is universal. Anyone, anywhere, who does anything that is a crime in the US is subject to arrest by US agents and trial in a US court. We're more than the cops of the world, we're the arbiters of what is and isn't just, is and isn't illegal, will and won't be punished. We are supreme.

Consider Manuel Noriega: Nothing he was accused of doing was within US jurisdiction. But that didn't matter. Indeed, Richard Gregorie, who supervised the framing of the indictment, said after the trial "we aren't going to be able to limit our law enforcement to within our borders.... The message is, we will come get you." That "getting" Noriega meant invading Panama and killing thousands of innocent people is irrelevant: "It doesn't matter how he got back here, once he's here he's subject to prosecution."

But if how the accused is "gotten" doesn't matter, what, then of Salman Rushdie? Iran has convicted him of an insult to Islam, a capital offense. Is it then okay that he should be hunted across the world, murdered if he's found, even though no crime as committed in Iran nor is Rushdie within its jurisdiction? If we say no, what is the difference between his case and Noriega's?

Will we argue it's that even though they took place outside the US, Noriega's actions hurt us? Iran can say the same; indeed it could argue its case is better because Noriega's crime couldn't have happened without our own internal corruption and desire for drugs and is harm done to people while Rushdie's crime affects innocents and is directed against God. Or will we say that Iran's law is unjust? That's just another way of saying that our law is the only one that counts.

We are in our foreign affairs a nation afflicted with arrogance and consumed with conceit, a nation whose musclebound commitment to its collective ego has lead it from the hope of being a light unto the world to the reality of being a blight unto the world. Among anyone with a conscience, the question must echo: By what right?

Footnote: Just to round things out:

U.S. officials add to the pressure on Ecuador's government, withholding $7 million in aid because Ecuador refuses to grant U.S. government personnel immunity from prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

So our law applies to everyone else, but no one else's law, not even international law, can be applied to us. Well, that seems fair. And balanced. And a wonderful expression of democracy in action, yes?

Updated to note that yesterday was the anniversary of the bombing of PanAm flight 103, which fell on Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. The BBC archives remember the event.