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Entry: Who Guards the Guardians? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/who_guards_the_guardians#29799 Post contents: This string may be as good a place as any to mention that I have just received my copy of John Laughland's "A History of Political Trials" and it appears to be really first rate, going from Charles I (King Charles the Martyr to us in the SKCM) to Sadam Hussein. His concluding chapter is worth the price of the book in itself, as he notes that in over 300 years of trials of heads of state there has never been a single acquittal; and a money quote is the following (about international tribunals such as the ICTY): "International tribunals wield their power without even attempting to fulfil the side of thebargain usually regarded as an inherent part of the social contract: the government's duty to use its power to protect its citizens. International tribunals, indeed, have no 'citizens' at all. They are subject to no system of political accountability which ties teir actions back to the people over whom they have jurisdiction; they are not controlled by a national legislature or subject to indirect control by political culture or ublic opinion. They are the judicial equivalent of military bombardment from 30,000 feet: the peoples under their writ cannot fight back." The last sentence of the book is eerily apropos of this case, as he says: "For it is the very essence of the human condition itself that there is no escape from the oldest conundrum of political philosophy: if we appoint guardians to protect our supreme values, who will guard the guardians themselves?" Sent at: 2008 12 02