SNIP
>
>So the US wants to be the world's policeman, fighting to uphold international laws, but not having the inconvenience of being hampered by being bound by those laws.

No, that's not what I said. I purposefully said "called upon" because there are numerous cases, at least as I understand events, that the U.S. was ASKED to (assist in the < s >) cleanup of a situation.

Things like Kosovo and Bosnia and Somalia and Lebanon come to mind as examples.

Let's take the "Mi-Lai (sp?) Massacre" as a possible example as applying to the world criminal court...
It was wrong and when it came to light it was dealt with by U.S. (applicable) justice of the day.
Now it seems to me that any "world criminal court" might feel obligated to impose not only penalties to the perpetrators but also penalties to the U.S. itself including things like mandating changes to operational and governmental procedures (much in the way that an inquest might do, to aim at preventing recurrences).

My view is that mandating ANYTHING along those lines is WAY OUT OF BOUNDS as it represents an intrusion that is untenable.

I could also see countries passing specific laws aimed at forcing world court actions in the event that another country acted there EVEN at the behest of an entity like the U.N. or other pertinent international body.

So I don't see it at all as 'enforcement of laws while not being bound by such laws themselves' but rather as simply protecting its sovereignty to deal with misdeeds within the confines of its OWN laws.

I must admit, though, that I do find it strange that the U.S. happily submits to very similar constraints as regards trade. But then they also flagrantly disregard many of those constraints when it is convenient. The difference, I suppose, is that there is no criminality attached to such actions and I do think that is a BIG difference.