Christopher Hitchens lauds the American people’s patriotism and restraint after 9/11:
“He [Hitchens] was, however, slightly disturbed by Gornick’s suggestion that the increase in patriotic displays over the last 18 months was nothing more than collective insecurity masquerading as civic engagement. “In my day, Vivian,” he said, “we called it ‘solidarity.'” Hitchens added–rather calmly, for a change–that none of the looting, pillaging, and persecution predicted after 9/11 occurred because people were acutely aware of the danger of turning into something completely antipodean to American values.”
Coming from the UK where the Victorian’s famously created the idea that children should be ‘seen and not heard’, an American value that I particularly admire is the celebration of childhood. A large portion of American culture celebrates childhood. As such, the Washington snipers’ threat last week that no children were safe, produced an instinctive reaction of revulsion.
So two people have been arrested over the sniper attacks, and one of them is a 17 year old minor. Someone not yet deemed to have the responsibility to vote or drink but who could be held ultimately responsible for their own actions and be sentenced to death if tried in Virginia.
The execution of minors, children, is only legally sanctioned in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the US and – Iraq.
Robert Bryce wrote in Salon that “During his tenure as governor of Texas, Bush has overseen far more executions than any other governor in modern American history. During his tenure, 112 men and one woman have been executed. That’s nearly 20 percent of the 600 people who have been executed in the United States since 1976. Two of the men executed during Bush’s tenure — Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter, both of whom were executed in 1998 — were 17 at the time of their crimes.”
The US’s policy on capital punishment has often produced anger abroad, prompting Jack Lang, the former French Education minister to call George W Bush a “murderer.”
In 1999 the high court asked Solicitor General Seth Waxman – the Justice Department’s second-ranking law officer – to explain why the United States is not bound by the international civil rights treaty, which states: “Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women.”
“In 1992, the U.S. did ratify the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, but only after inserting a codicil disavowing the provision that banned the execution of minors. And the U.S. signed the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which also bans capital punishment for persons younger than 18 at the time of crime, but the Senate never ratified it.”
Every country but the United States and Somalia also has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bans the juvenile death penalty.
According to Victor L. Streib, dean of Ohio Northern University’s Law School.
“We may be in violation of international law,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect to see U.N. troops in Virginia anytime soon.”