Courting a surrender of sovereignty.

ITEM: A January 30 release from Citizens for Global Solutions applauded Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for his televised remarks made the previous Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he "declared his support for the United States joining the International Criminal Court (ICC), asserting: 'I want us in the ICC.' McCain's comments drastically change the debate on the International Criminal Court, in part because the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report, expected to be released mid-next week, likely will recommend a UN Security Council referral of the Darfur situation [in Sudan] to the ICC."

The president of Citizens for Global Solutions, Charles J. Brown, "who served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Rome Conference on the Establishment of an international Criminal Court, said: 'We can only hope that such sentiments go from John McCain's mouth to George Bush's ear. The International Criminal Court promotes accountability for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It poses no threat to American interests and in fact reaffirms fundamental American values.'"

CORRECTION: For the record, Senator McCain's reservations about potential U.S. membership in the ICC were downplayed by Citizens for Global Solutions, which favors world government. Of potential U.S. membership in the ICC, McCain went on to say, "I'm not satisfied that there are enough safeguards." Nevertheless, that caveat does not change the fact that a partial surrender of independence is still a surrender and that a supposedly restrained ICC will undoubtedly be unleashed over time.

Keep in mind that the ICC can compel an individual to testify against himself, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. It also permits double jeopardy, doesn't require an impartial jury, and doesn't allow the right to confront or cross-examine hostile witnesses--among other violations of the U.S. Constitution. Claiming that joining the ICC is consistent with fundamental American values is an outright falsehood being fed to Americans to implement a subversive agenda.

But subversive agendas and double-dealing are the name of the game in the international community. For instance, while the U.S. has called the killings in Sudan "genocide," many countries would prefer not to invoke treaty requirements that would ensue if genocide were officially declared by the United Nations. (Russia, for example, supplies arms to Khartoum; Communist China and France have oil interests in Sudan.) The Bush administration, often mistakenly said to have an anti-internationalist stance, has hardly removed itself from the globalist camp, but is merely trying to shift the Sudanese conflict to a different tribunal.

The Wall Street Journal, though internationalist to the core, correctly notes, "Only in the U.N. do countries believe they can get moral credit for deploring crimes that they actively refuse to do anything about. And while no country has done more than the U.S. to stop the depredations against Darfur, the media have suddenly changed the subject away from sanctions against Sudan and focused on the Bush administration's 'unilateralist' rejection of the ICC."

The Bush administration's publicized differences with the ICC do not reflect animus to the United Nations--just the reverse. Indeed, when the State Department announced in 2002 that the U.S. could no longer be a party to the ICC process, the very first objection the State Department cited was that the "ICC undermines the role of the United Nations Security Council in maintaining international peace and security."

You can call that position many things, but it's hardly an America First agenda.