> But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
If I were neutral on America and if a neutral disposition, you might be correct. However, I’m not.
The President of the United States is elected to be a civil and military leader, as the Head of the United States Government, as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and to represent the United States abroad as our Head of State.
All other things being equal, I would prefer the POTUS to also be moral and to generally be a good moral leader in his capacity as the POTUS, but that is not the same as being nice, and “nice” is not what the elected President is elected to be.
So, would I for example, prefer to capture people like Qasem Soleimani and try them in an open court? Absolutely. Is that more practical than having killed him when the opportunity presented itself dealing a blow to an enemy nation, taking out one of the most important men in his nation which is openly hostile to America and our ally? Not really, but I’d rather see someone like that dead than in a position to threaten American assets and personnel in the region. You can even debate whether American assets or personnel should be in the region, but as long as they are, it is absolutely the President’s job to defend them, because it is under his orders that they are present at all and the American military is formed from the people of our country, and nowhere is it written in our Constitution that the President’s decisions should be second-guessed or tried in an International Court. Even our own courts shy away from this as it relates to foreign policy and the policy of the military.
> It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial.
It would be pretty easy to complain if they pursued trying American citizens when we don’t recognize their jurisdiction over American citizens. The ICC, whatever else it is, is still a court with the backing of real sovereign nations. They’re not a high school debate club.
> How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
A combination of morality, the law, diplomacy and hard power. You can even concoct scenarios if you wanted to where the United States may even been in the losing moral position but still win on all other fronts, but for starters, we’re not party to the Rome Statute, we do have our own laws on trying war crimes, and we also maintain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.