Something I didn't know

Updated Thanks to Eli at Left I on the News, I have discovered that, dammit, we really are the cops of the world.

In response to a new report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had purchased and smoked a Cuban cigar during a recent visit to Canada, U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said

"Persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction are prohibited from purchasing or importing Cuban cigars, regardless of where they are."

While it remained unclear whether anyone had ever been prosecuted for it, the fact remains that if a US citizen or permanent resident alien buys a Cuban cigar in another country and smokes it in that other country, we say they still can be fined up to $250,000 and/or imprisoned for up to 10 years per violation. The same applies to purchasing or consuming any other Cuban product, even if it's done entirely outside the US in a country where such purchase and use are entirely legal.

This apparently only applies, again, only to US citizens and permanent resident aliens, at which all others should let loose a sigh of relief. Because it could be even worse.

Y'see, I have to take back the part about having just discovered this, because while I was unaware of the particular inanity described in this case, the idea behind it is not new to me. Just over 15 years ago, in May 1992, in discussing a US demand that the suspects in the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 be extradited to the US for trial, I said this:

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 addressing 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 who does something that's 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 done 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 own 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 here he's subject to prosecution." ...

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?

Now, I think Eli is rather too enamored of Castro, in precisely the same way that too many are too enamored of the US: embracing the good while ignoring or denying the bad. (Eli recently referred to "alleged" political prisoners in Cuba.) But when he notes the utter madness of US policy toward Cuba, he is spot on - and what it reveals about how our government views the rest of the world often goes far beyond the particular case.

Updated with a Footnote: Through JayV at Blazing Indiscretions, I hear that there was a gathering of Episcopal bishops from the US and the West Indies in New York the end of May. Newly-elected suffragans from Cuba were also invited, but they were denied entry into the US on the grounds that they are a danger to national security.