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Suing governments over terror no sure thing despite U.S. 9/11 law

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gokai_wo_maneku,

So does that mean that people can sue the US for all the stuff it has done?

That's a thought! The Vietnam war would cripple them and the Iraq war would finish them off. Let alone all the rest.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The US will lose its moral authority, when it talks about human rights violation in other countries.

The US lost it's moral authority when it invaded Iraq. In that situation, the US are the terrorists. They went in, and started killing people and blowing stuff up. Exactly what terrorists do.

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Terrorism is an International threat and UN should pass a resolution and boycott any nation, which supports and help terrorists.The US cannot shelve off its responsibility and ask citizens to file a case against a country. If US knows that a country is involved in terror, the logical action is to ban that country. The US government cannot let down its own citizens like a hot potato. If citizens are asked to file a case, then the purpose of any government is defeated. The US will lose its moral authority, when it talks about human rights violation in other countries. When you cant protect your own citizens, you dont have any authority of issue warnings.

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Gokai

Yes. Apparently, '......it could lead to the US being opened to "a situation where we're suddenly exposed to liabilities for all the work that we're doing all around the world and suddenly finding ourselves subject to private lawsuits".

And........'Meanwhile, leaders of the Republican party in Congress have said they want to reconsider the law. The Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell admitted that lawmakers had not understood the possible consequences of the legislation.

"Everybody was aware of who the potential beneficiaries were but nobody really had focused on the downside in terms of our international relationships,'" Mr McConnell said.

The White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was "a pretty classic case of rapid onset buyer's remorse".

Typical GOP controlled Congress. Go against anything Obama tries to do even if it's the wrong thing for Congress to do.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

So does that mean that people can sue the US for all the stuff it has done?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

This is not about families of victims trying to get compensation for their loss, but about greedy law firms

I don't think the famillies are interested in who ends up getting most of the money, they just want their day in court.

The article tells you that the number of lawsuits in the US has tripled over the past 10 years and there have already been billions of dollars worth of judgements. JASTA only takes us one step further on a road we have already gone down. Why haven't all the threatened foreign lawsuits against the US materialised yet? If Pakistan wanted to define drone strikes as terrorism and sue the US, what has stopped them from doing this? Their renowned respect for principles of international law? I don't think so.

The scaremongering from the Whitehouse is theoretically possible, but it's very very far fetched. Looking at what other countries do, Spain currently claims universal jurisdiction over human rights abuses that take place anywhere in the world if they involve a Spanish citizen (it used to be involving anybody). This is a huge departure from international law, but everyone accepts that Spain wants to be seen as a champion of human rights after the Franco era. Likewise, the world will accept that the US is in a unique position as the world's #1 terror target and also the world's #1 destination for foreign money.

The rationale against passing the law ultimately seems to be based on 3 underlying assumptions a.) that foreign governments and courts can't be trusted to act sensibly, b.) that the US may be engaging in terrorism overseas, c.) that all other countries in the world are just out to get the US and will use this opportunity to do so. I think most sane people would reject all of these assumptions. They say that passing this bill will damage international relations, but I think not passing is for the reasons above is much more insulting to other countries.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

This is not about families of victims trying to get compensation for their loss, but about greedy law firms which stand to make millions. The families will get less of any settlement or award than their lawyers and their law firms will.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

It isn't foreign governments that need to be sued for 9/11.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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