See this fist?

The Guardian report was posted before Bolton gave his speech; the Times reports the speech given.

The Trump administration threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it pursued an investigation of American troops in Afghanistan, opening a harsh new attack on an old nemesis of many on the political right.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said in a speech on Monday in Washington.

“We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists in an I.C.C. investigation of Americans.”

In other words: Listen up, peasants: the United States is better than everyone else, and it is above the law. We can do whatever we want because we are the Colonial Power and you are the colonized. We have the biggest fist, and you can’t touch us. To sum up: we don’t give a rat’s ass about your stupid “international law” and your “treaties” and your “court.” If you don’t give us what we demand, we’ll just take it. In conclusion, fuck all of you.

Mr. Bolton’s hostile words, in what the White House has called his first major address as national security adviser, echoed the position he took as a senior official in the George W. Bush administration, when Mr. Bolton emerged as the most virulent foe of the court, which is based in The Hague.

The United States declined to join the court during Mr. Bush’s first term, when Mr. Bolton was an under secretary of state and later ambassador to the United Nations. After he left the Bush administration, the White House showed a little less resistance to the court’s work, even expressing support for its investigation of atrocities in Darfur.

Let’s keep this in mind when Trump makes us look back on Bush as not so bad.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States began helping the court in investigations and shifted to a policy of “positive engagement,” according to Harold Koh, then the State Department’s legal adviser.

Still, the United States never joined the court. And with Mr. Bolton back in power, the White House has swung back to the language of 2002 and 2003. In his speech, he made familiar arguments against the court, saying that it infringed on American sovereignty, had unchecked power, and was “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.”

What about Germany’s sovereignty? Huh? Didn’t the Nürnberg trials infringe on Germany’s sovereignty? Why shouldn’t a country commit genocide if it feels like it and nobody can stop it? Not just any country, of course, but the US, and…no, just the US.

“The largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. service members, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.”

By “senior political leadership” he of course means “more firepower.” The idea that we have “senior political leadership” at this moment is a mix of laughable and emetic.

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