Things Keep Getting Better and Better In Iraq

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for two British soldiers freed after a British raid in Basra, an Iraqi lawyer said on Saturday, and thousands rallied in the southern city in support of a new constitution.

Judge Raghib Hassan issued the warrants on Thursday, accusing the men of killing an Iraqi policeman and wounding another, carrying unlicensed weapons and holding false identification, Kassim al-Sabti, the head of the lawyers' syndicate in Basra told Reuters.

Britain's Secretary of State for Defense John Reid said the Ministry of Defense had not received any arrest warrant for British soldiers in Iraq, adding that in any case the warrants would have no legal basis.

"Iraqi law is very clear. British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process. They remain subject to British law," he said in a statement.

The whereabouts of the two soldiers was not clear.

Wow. The Ministry of Defense's official position on this matter amounts to "Suck it, bitch."

Why do I continue to think this isn't going to end well for any of us?

Of course, there's nothing particularly unusual about the British position. The US military maintains bases across the planet, and in every case US soldiers are immune from local law - including when US Marines rape and murder Japanese of Korean schoolgirls, which shamefully has a long history. Less than a half dozen soldiers have ever even been arrested, and to my knowledge only three have ever actually been jailed. This out of a recorded history of dozens of "incidents."

This all dates back to a period of China's history, when European and American powers claimed that Whites should not be subject to "primitive" Chinese law. (There was a similar short-lived attempt to force western legal codes on Japan.) Even though these treaties were all renounced in 1944, the principle of "extraterritoriality" (usually just called "extrality") remains, and has become part and parcel of American military policy. This has led to some pretty perverse situations, such as in Kuwait, where in the run-up to the latest Iraq War it was said that Kuwaitis were barred from 1/4 of their country. Extrality was also one of the major grievances cited by Khomeini in the years before the Iranian Revolution.

And yet somehow extrality is never reconsidered. It's been absolutely toxic to America's relationships, even with staunch allies like Seoul and Tokyo, and it continues to cause problems like today in Iraq.

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." - Herbert Stein