Never On Sunday

On hearing that IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Khan had been nabbed and denied bail pending a sexual abuse trial, I was quietly pleased. Presuming his alleged victim isn’t simply hoping to hit the wrongful lawsuit jackpot—which doesn’t seem likely, but can never be entirely dismissed—we’ve got a rare case of a man of power and privilege being held accountable. By the time I learned he is (or rather, was) a major contender for the French presidency, the news should have been even better.

By the time I learned this, however, my reaction was more muted. Would I be so cheery if, say, France had snagged John Kerry on one of his many francophilic trips, charged him with sexual assault, and ruined his 2004 bid for the presidency? Probably not, but my objections would lie with Kerry rather than France. I can’t consider myself a hypocrite when it comes to arresting some other country’s leading politicians because I would also cheer the arrest of America’s leading politicians for the same crimes—presuming, again, the charges are genuine.

My country, however, again fails the hypocrisy test. Remember how it backed Blackwater employees who perpetrated massacres on unarmed civilians, giving credence to Blackwater’s claims that they were not subject to American military law because they weren’t regular forces, nor American civil law because they weren’t in the US, nor Iraqi law because they were operating under the American flag? They were mere sociopathic thugs. Imagine the uproar were presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty to take a “fact-finding” trip to Iceland, observing how the economic policies he embraces destroyed that country’s economy and blaming it all somehow on Democrats, get arrested for rape, and be denied bail. Conservative politicians would go berserk and immediately manufacture a narrative of false arrest and probably terrorist conspiracy with Obama as cryptoislamic ringleader. Moderate politicians would agree that Iceland has no place “interfering with American politics” in this way, whether or not the charges were true. Liberal politicians would mumble something about international cooperation but wouldn’t actually stand up to defend it for fear of being painted as “soft on foreign policy.” Obama would find the middle ground between these, and the US would cut whatever portion of its throat faces Iceland simply to punish them uppity furr’ners.

But of course, like all other crimes, IARIYAR