Presidential candidates and the ICC

Miracles do happen. But I was still surprised when I looked at Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle and there, the day before the Iowa caucuses, right there on the front page, was an article about the Presidential race that actually addressed the candidates positions on a substantive policy issue! And the article, Presidential candidates diverge on U.S. joining war crimes court by Bob Egelko 01/02/08, avoids chirping the conventional wisdom all the way through. But I guess that's obvious already. In the conventional wisdom, an issue like whether the United States should join the International Criminal Court (ICC) doesn't even exist.

Egelko reminds us what the ICC is:

The court was established in 2002 to deal with cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Headquartered in the Dutch city of The Hague, it was conceived as a permanent successor to the Nuremberg tribunals formed to try Nazi leaders after World War II. It now has 105 members, including virtually all current U.S. allies, but not the United States itself.

President Bush has attacked the court relentlessly, saying it could subject Americans to politically motivated prosecutions abroad. He has renounced the 1998 treaty that created the court, pressed other nations to disregard it, and signed legislation - nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act" by critics - authorizing military action to free any citizen of the United States or an allied nation held for trial by the court.

What, you haven't heard that the US passed such a hostile piece of legislation so that American officials could avoid being held accountable to international law? Gosh, I guess it could be because our "press corps" has been too busy drooling over Dear Leader Bush's codpiece and gasping in shock at John Edwards' haircuts to notice such a boring issue.

Not surprisingly, the Republican candidates are uniformly hostile to it, though the great Maverick McCain at least mealy-mouthes heavily over it.


On the Democratic side, Clinton and Obama mealy-mouth about the ICC more sympathetically - a real disappointment - in an issue in which, Egelko explains, "the disagreements over the court represent some of the most critical foreign-policy questions in the post-Cold War world..." Edwards, Kucinich and Mike Gravel all support joining the ICC. The best pro-ICC position was taken by Chris Dodd, who said:

Let's make good on the vision of [Nuremberg prosecutors] Robert Jackson, Whitney Harris, and my father [former Sen. Thomas Dodd] and lend American support to a strong, stable, permanent international criminal court to help end genocide once and for all."

If Dodd is still in the race at the time of the California primary, I'm going to vote for him because of his sensible position on that and on complete withdrawal from the Iraq War, and because he led the filibuster against amnesty for telecoms who violated the law by assisting the Cheney-Bush administration in illegally spying on American citizens.

Who took the most hostile position to the ICC? It goes without saying it was a Republican. And who else would it be but, yep, that famous "dove", Ron Paul!!! He said:

The United Nations and the ICC are inherently incompatible with national sovereignty. America must either remain a constitutional republic or submit to international law, because it cannot do both.

Yes, who would have thought it? The darling of the white supremacists and Birchers is totally against the United Nations and international law! Who could have ever suspected such a thing?

So, for anyone tempted to admire Ron Paul for his opposition to the Iraq War, if you have any interest is seeing the United States actively participate in more cooperative, peaceful international arrangements - and especially if you have any interest at all in nuclear nonproliferation - get a clue about this guy. Yes, I'm talking to you, Robert Scheer and Glenn Greenwald.

Tags: authoritarianism, bush doctrine, glenn greenwald, international criminal court, internaional law, robert scheer, ron paul

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