OBAMA WARMS TO IDEA OF INTERNATIONAL JURSIDICTION OVER AMERICANS

Posted By on November 18th, 2009

http://newsrealblog.com/2009/11/18/obama-warms-to-the-idea-of-an-international-body-having-jurisdiction-over-americans/
Politicsby Claude Cartaginese

Proponents of central planning, collectivism and world government such as Amy Goodman, the good comrade in front of the camera at Democracy Now!, are giddy over the recent announcement from the administration of President Barack Obama that the United States may consider re-joining the International Criminal Court [ICC].

Goodman was extremely pleased to report that:

The United States has announced it will attend an International Criminal Court meeting this week as an observer for the first time since The Hague court was set up in 2002. The US signed the ICC treaty during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but it was never ratified by Congress. Clinton’s successor George W. Bush later rejected the idea of joining the court.

The ICC, you may recall, was established by treaty in 1998 to provide a forum in which to try persons who are “accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” Although that treaty (known as the Rome Statute) has been ratified by some 110 countries, the United States, which has always opposed the prospect of a foreign body having jurisdiction over American citizens, is not among those nations; nor, for that matter, are Russia, China, or India.

Clinton signed the Rome Statute during the final days of his presidency. George W. Bush, who feared that ambitious prosecutors and judges would subject American soldiers and government officials to politicized prosecutions, subsequently rescinded that signature.

Bush found the following language of a particular provision cited in Article 5, Section 2 of the ICC document particularly troubling:

The Court shall exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once a provision is adopted in accordance with Articles 121 and 123 defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to this crime.

The Bush administration had a major problem with the use of the word “aggression;” and even today, years after the drafting of the treaty, there is still no satisfactory definition as to what constitutes “aggression.” Bush feared that the language was so broad that the potential for abuse in the form of targeted prosecution against American civilian and military leaders was too great a possibility to ignore. Water boarding a suspect, or an Abu Ghraib-type incident, might get an American soldier executed somewhere by a foreign government acting under the jurisdictional control of the ICC.

This was an unacceptable possibility for Bush, but doesn’t seem to be much of an issue for Obama, whose position on the issue was articulated by National Security Advisor Spokesman Ben Chang, who exclaimed during the first month of Obama’s administration that:

We support the ICC in its pursuit of those who’ve perpetrated war crimes.

But why would the folks at Democracy Now! and others on the left be so especially keen on having an International Criminal Court in which to try war criminals?

The real answer is chilling.

The left considers the biggest war criminal of all to be none other than: George W. Bush.

Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the leftist European Centre for Human and Constitutional Rights–who has already tried unsuccessfully to sue Bush and former U.S. authorities in European courts–has articulated the left’s position clearly and without ambiguity:

Judicial clarification of the crimes against international law the former U.S. government committed is one of the most delicate issues that the new U.S. president Barack Obama will have to deal with.

Kalek went on to warn the Obama administration that it will have to:

Deal with the turpitudes committed by the Bush government. And, furthermore, the U.S. government will have to pay compensation to the innocent people who were victims of these crimes.
It’s all coming into focus now.

What an achievement it would be for the left to have an American ex-President on trial in a foreign court for “war crimes,” with the potential added bonus of a shakedown of the American taxpayer for the payment of crippling “reparations.” Obama would be opening a Pandora’s box with the re-ratification the Rome Statute.

Or is that the plan?

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