Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any steenking badges.
~ Gold Hat played by Alfonso Bedoya (born: 1904-04-16 died: 1956-12-15 at age: 52) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The United States has signed onto treaties committing it to the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg principles that aggressive (first strike war) is illegal, that all countries are obligated to arrest war criminals, the UN Charter etc. However, whenever it finds those treaties chafing, it pulls a Gold Hat and tells the world to go fuck itself. The American attitude is law does not apply to America because no one is both powerful enough and willing to prosecute the USA with is massive nuclear arsenal and history of illegal and capricious military actions. Oddly, nearly all Americans cheer this piratical, wild west outlaw, scofflaw attitude. If I were American, I would deeply ashamed that my country so rarely kept its word.