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Dude... let's put this in perspective, shall we? Belgium, one of the smallest of European countries, militarily, politically and economically insignificant compared to the USA, has a law that allows anyone to sue anyone else for crimes committed anywhere in the world. Now, there's a bunch of leftist would-be politicians who decide to sue the US president using that law... Can you see the difference in scale there? It'd be like seretogis said: some town decides to create a law making it illegal to post on the TFP, and anyone in the world doing it can be prosecuted and imprisoned... and you happen to go to work there, or have a summer house there, or whatever.
It's not so much the threat of arrest and punishment that matters, it's the media attention and loss of face. I can guarantee that everyone in the Muslim world has heard about the case, and I can guarantee that a lot of them *know* Bush is guilty, no matter what Belgium does (just like a lot of anti-US/anti-war guys *know* he's guilty). If Belgium decides to dismiss the case (they did), anti-Bush people *know* it's because of political pressure from the US, so Bush is still guilty. That is why I said that these cases are political, not criminal. A bunch of angry people decide to sue US officials, and thereby hijack the Belgian legal and political system for their ends. FYI, Saddam Hussain was also sued under this law, as was Fidel Castro. Both cases were dismissed. Given that knowledge, anyone trying to sue the US president must have known they didn't stand a chance of actually ending up in court.
Anyway, the law is going to be changed soon: only crimes committed by or against Belgian nationals will be covered by the law. This is comparable to most of other similar laws around the world.
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