RUTHFULLY YOURS

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued indictments yesterday for Moammar Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah Sanoussi. That’ll show ’em.

The Gadhafis were first referred to the ICC in February, when the international community felt the need to “do something” about Libya’s brutal repression of a popular uprising but couldn’t bring itself to do anything decisive. Which is, in a way, a good summary of the role of the ICC writ small.

The court’s backers have long argued that it would be an instrument for bringing justice to the more benighted regions and leaders of the world. But as often as not it serves as a way for the international community to pretend to do something without having to get its hands dirty stopping genocides or other crimes against humanity. Thus Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir resides comfortably in Khartoum more than two years after his first indictment by the court. No word yet on whether the Gadhafis plan to turn themselves in.

The usual suspects among human-rights campaigners praised yesterday’s indictments for sending the right message. But that’s a message mass murderers like the Gadhafis rarely understand. The only time Gadhafi changed his behavior for the better came days after the world watched Saddam Hussein emerge bound and broken from his spider hole, at which point the Libyan promptly abandoned his WMD program. Fear is the one language every dictator understands.

Gadhafi was never likely to accept a quiet exile even if one were offered, but the referral to the ICC followed by the indictment has made that possibility even more remote. In that sense the court works against the cause of peaceful exile for dictators. So the ICC has presented an indictment for crimes of which the Gadhafis are certainly guilty, in a case in which they are unlikely to stand trial. Some justice.