International Criminal Court sellout: predictably, the Bush administration has caved in on the ICC, exposing U.S. soldiers to prosecution and opening the door for dismantling America's time-tested judicial system. (Global Court).

Some things are reassuringly predictable. The sun will rise, seasons will change, water will run downhill ...and "conservative" Republican presidents will sell out our nation on key matters of principle. Granted, physical laws do not dictate the behavior of such politicians -- but it has nonetheless been strikingly predictable, and President Bush's cave-in on the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) fits the well-established pattern of perfidy.

In early July, the Bush administration vetoed an extension of the UN's peacekeeping mission to Bosnia, citing concerns that U.S. personnel engaged in that mission faced potential prosecution by the ICC, which went into operation on July 1st. The administration promised that it would approve the mission if U.S. personnel were granted immunity from the ICC. On July 11th, administration officials announced a compromise: The U.S. would vote in favor of renewing the mission if our military personnel and diplomatic personnel were granted a one-year exemption from prosecution. That proposal was accepted by a unanimous Security Council vote on July 12th.

Extolling what he considered the merits of the compromise proposal, Richard Grenell of the U.S. Mission to the UN boasted: "What we have been focused on is ensuring that American men and women are not within the reach of the International Criminal Court. What we have been able to offer today ... [is] that for a period of 12 months they would have that immunity."

In fact, the word "immunity" does not appear in the relevant Security Council resolution; the text only refers to a temporary exemption that the Security Council would have to renew one year from now. In principle, the threat of eventual ICC prosecution effectively holds hostage U.S. servicemen abroad.

Preserving "Peacekeeping"

By seeking a compromise on immunity for U.S. servicemen, the Bush administration ensured that our military remains engaged in UN-approved military missions overseas. Officials from the president on down have emphasized their intention to preserve the supposedly vital work of "peacekeeping," in which thousands of American servicemen serve under UN command.

A letter sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell by several Republican senators pointed out that the administration's compromise on immunity imperils not only military personnel, but common citizens as well. "In our view, [the proposed] solution would not only fail to provide the comprehensive, permanent solution needed to ensure immunity of Americans involved in all UN peacekeeping activities, but would constitute an improper acknowledgement of the court's jurisdiction over American persons," observed the letter, as quoted in the July 12th Washington Times.

This is the crux of the entire issue: By seeking "compromise" of any sort on the ICC, the Bush administration recognized, in principle, the legitimacy of the UN's court, and thereby bound our nation to its decrees. And a compromise was made necessary because of our nation's continuing involvement in UN-mandated missions overseas. This is why THE NEW AMERICAN and The John Birch Society (of which this publication is an affiliate) have repeatedly warned that the Bush administration's well-publicized "un-signing" of the ICC treaty did not diminish the dangers posed by that court.

"Un-signing" the treaty was a grand, empty gesture intended to palliate the president's conservative constituency, while doing nothing to impede the UN's steady accumulation of power. This is a telling illustration of the Bush administration's true loyalties and priorities.

Other Ominous Acts

In our July 15th issue, THE NEW AMERICAN reported the appointment of Defense Department attorney David M. Crane to serve as chief prosecutor for the UN War Crimes Tribunal for Sierra Leone. This appointment was entirely compatible with the Bush administration's position, as outlined in the May 6th speech by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman. In that speech, Grossman emphasized that the administration would willingly collaborate with the UN to create "hybrid" judicial institutions, in which national governments would cooperate with the UN to try those accused of violating international law.

This underscores another persistent trait of "conservative" Republican administrations, which one could describe as seeking a middle course between fidelity and adultery. "Hybrid" courts of the sort Grossman described would be as illegitimate as so-called "open marriages." There is no legitimate role for international intervention in our judicial system, and American legal and judicial personnel should play no role in similar UN invasions of other national legal systems.

The ICC is utterly incompatible with our nation's founding vision of the rule of law, in which government exists to protect individual rights. But even as the Bush administration theatrically condemns the ICC as a threat to our military, it is pursuing domestic policies incorporating some of the most ominous features of that UN-created institution.

Critics of the ICC point out that it does not recognize the Habeas Corpus guarantee -- the "great writ" of English common law protecting against arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment. However, the Bush administration, invoking the "war on terrorism," claims the power to designate individuals -- including U.S. citizens -- as "enemy combatants" and detain them for as long as it pleases. This claim was made in a Justice Department brief filed in the case of U.S.-born Yasser Essam Hamdi, captured by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. The Bush administration brief claimed that "the Court may not second-guess the military's enemy-combatant determination" by granting a Habeas Corpus petition from the detainee.

Another dangerous innovation represented by the ICC is the principle of universal jurisdiction, under which U.S. citizens could be arrested on the orders of the UN and extradited to stand trial before the ICC in The Hague. The Clinton administration created a critical precedent in this respect by arresting and extraditing Eliziphan Ntakirutimana, an elderly Rwandan pastor accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Acting on UN orders, FBI agents arrested Ntakirutimana in late 1996. At the time he was a legal resident alien living with his son in Texas.

Having examined the Clinton administration's extradition request, federal magistrate judge Marcel Notzon pointed out two very serious flaws in it. First, the request's supporting affidavit didn't meet standards of evidence common in American courtrooms. Second, no extradition treaty exists between the U.S. and the UN. Every existing precedent, noted the judge, "has required that a valid treaty exist between the United States and the country seeking extradition" and that "a treaty of extradition is required before extradition can occur." Accordingly, Notzon threw out the request - reinstated later by a federal appeals court. In 1999, Ntakirutimana was extradited to Tanzania to stand trial before a UN war crimes tribunal.

Under our justice system, legal resident aliens accused of crimes enjoy the same procedural rights and guarantees as U.S. citizens. Thus Ntakirutimana's extradition to stand trial before a UN war crimes tribunal set a precedent that applies to all Americans. The UN prosecutor who oversaw that precedent-setting extradition, Pierre-Richard Prosper, is now the Bush administration's ambassador at large for war crimes.

In its newly released National Strategy for Homeland Security, the Bush administration builds on that treasonous precedent: "The war on terrorism is and must be a global effort.... To that end, the Departments of State and Justice should work with Congress to amend current extradition law in two respects. First, new legislation should be adopted that would authorize extradition for additional crimes where the United States already has an extradition treaty, but where the treaty applies only to a limited set of crimes. Second, Congress should grant the authority to extradite individuals from the United States for serious crimes in the absence of an ex-tradition treaty, on a case-by-case basis with the approval of the Attorney General and the Secretary of State." (Emphasis added.)

Whatever the rationale for this provision may be, it would eliminate the chief obstacle to further extraditions of U.S. citizens to stand trial before UN tribunals, including the ICC.

Get US out!

In a July 9th Washington Post editorial, Chris Patten, who boasts the grand title of European commissioner for external relations, accused the U.S. of "putting itself above the law" by resisting the ICC's jurisdiction. Patten, a British official whose' last assignment was to hand over Hong Kong to Communist China, suggested that immunizing U.S. troops from ICC prosecution would be akin to an outrage committed by King George III, as described in the Declaration of Independence -- namely, that the King "protected his troops 'from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States.'"

Whatever may be the shortcomings of most Americans, this much is certain: We do not need any help from British socialists to understand our founding documents. In cobbling together that column, Mr. Patten skipped over a section of the Declaration of Independence that is much more relevant to the ICC, principally the lines indicting the British Crown for "transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended Offenses and "combin[ing] with others to subject us to Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws...."

The ICC recognizes none of the rights and immunities protected by the Anglo-American legal tradition. It is accountable to no one. It has a mandate to invent the laws it would use in staging prosecutions. And the claim to exercise jurisdiction over citizens of nations not party to the ICC treaty is an act of aggression -- one of the core crimes supposedly prosecutable by that court.

Although the Bush administration's efforts to appease our enemies in the UN offered a painful and revolting spectacle, it did yield one positive result: It confirmed, beyond dispute, that the only way to deal with the ICC threat is to decapitate it by getting our nation out of the UN.