THE IMPERIAL EXCEPTION TO LAW

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Col. Writ. 2/12/02]

Copyright 2002

"One of these days, the American people are going to awaken to the fact that we have become an imperial nation ... It happened because the world wanted it to happen ... no European nation can have -- or really wants to have -- its own foreign policy."  Irving Kristol, (Wall St. Journal, 8/18/97)

    In the new post-Cold War world, the United States, due to its heavy emphasis on military power, has emerged as more than a lone superpower.  The French, perhaps envious of her emergence in world affairs without a serious rival, refers to the United States as a hyperpower.

    Not since ancient Rome, or perhaps the 500-year reign of the Ottomans, has one nation had such impact on such a vast portion of the world.

    With such outsized power, such pacified borders, such stratospheric wealth, what nation, or global entity, can bring her to heel?

    None exists.

    Several decades ago, when the Soviet Union existed but was precipitously in decline, the United States, following its Cold War imperatives, was charged with violating international law for sponsoring a terrorist rampage against Nicaragua.  As linguist and scholar, Noam Chomsky notes, the U.S. thumbed its nose at the laws:

.. [T]he U.S. is, after all, the only country
condemned by the World Court for international
terrorism -- for "the unlawful use of force" for
political ends, as the Court put it -- ordering the
U.S. to terminate these crimes and pay
substantial reparations.  The U.S. of course
dismissed the Court's judgment with contempt,
reacting by escalating the terrorist war against
Nicaragua and vetoing a Security Council
resolution calling on all states to observe
international law ... [Noam Chomsky, 9-11
 (Seven Stories Pr., 2001)].
 

    For, to an Empire, what other body exists that can judge its actions?  To an Empire, it is the only source of law that matters.

    Thus, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty can be consigned to the garbage can.  Thus, the Kyoto Protocols can be tossed into the gutter.  Thus, the Geneva Conventions can be ignored as Taliban soldiers of Afghanistan are shuffled, under sensory deprivation and drugs, into chain-linked cages under a Cuban sky.  Anyone who declares the U.S. should be subject to international treaties (which the U.S. has signed!) is seen as a traitor.

    Thus, the imperial government can establish special, military tribunals, where military officers serve as judges, and executive branch politicians sit as a final court of appeals, and death awaits those who go through this perilous process.  What does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights matter?

    It doesn't, to an empire.  Nothing does.

Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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