Pompeo’s Contempt of Court
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/pompeos-contempt-of-court/90613/
In a week of grim news, one bright spot stands out, at least for us — Secretary of State Pompeo’s announcement that America will block members of the International Criminal Court from coming here to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan. The ICC is a threat to American sovereignty, part of a broad attack on the very idea of sovereignty being levied by world government types.
No doubt there will be those who set this down as an all too Trumpian contempt. Concern about the ICC, though, is broadly bipartisan. The court was brought into being via a treaty called the Rome Statute, adopted in 1998. America inked the parchment, but in 2000 President Clinton declared he would neither submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification nor recommend his successor do so.
The successor was President George W. Bush, who went Mr. Clinton one further. He worked with Congress to pass the American Service-Members’ Protection Act. It guards our GIs and officials from criminal prosecution by “an international criminal court to which the United States is not party.” It passed the Democratic-led Senate by a vote of 71 to 22. The opposition to the ICC was bipartisan.
Just to nail down the matter, Mr. Bush in 2002 sent one of his under state secretaries, John Bolton at the time, over to the United Nations to, as the Associated Press put it, “ceremonially ‘unsign’ the Rome Statute at the United Nations.” Though not without controversy, that reflected a broad-based desire in our democracy not to snicker at the laws of war but to deal directly with our own personnel.
Naturally, the moves that Mr. Pompeo announced Friday were met with howls of outrage by the hard left. The ICC itself was, like any multilateral institution, openly derisive of America’s concerns. It put out a statement boasting that it was “independent” and that it would carry on with its work “undeterred.” Human Rights Watch, which has emerged as an anti-Trump institution, called Mr. Pompeo’s move “thuggish.”
We see the administration’s move as part of a broad and salutary strategy away from world government and multilateral institutions. It’s not that we — or, we estimate, either Messrs. Trump, Pompeo, or Bolton — lurk against human rights and the rule of law. The world government campaign, though, has produced a United Nations Human Rights Council that includes the likes of, say, communist Cuba.
In other words, this whole movement produced a laughing stock. The International Criminal Court is a separate treaty from the United Nations. The U.N., though, stands as an example for those who see the ICC as nothing but trouble for countries that maintain their own rule of law. This is why the GOP platform, on which Mr. Trump stood for office, promised efforts to block the ICC from going after our GIs.
So good for Secretary Pompeo. He warned that ICC personnel involved in investigating any of our GIs in respect of Afghanistan should not assume they will be “permitted to enter the United States.” He warned that visa restrictions “will not be the end of our efforts,” and that economic sanctions could follow. Chalk it up as another Trump campaign promise redeemed.
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