The Obama administration has decided that the U.S. will participate in a conference with members of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Stephen Rapp, the U.S. Ambassador at large for war crimes, says that we will now “engage” with the ICC — something President Bush had refused to do — though we do not intend to join it in the foreseeable future.
I guess we can be grateful that President Obama hasn’t tried to enroll us in the ICC. In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton signed the treaty establishing the court (however, he said that the treaty should not be submitted to the Senate for ratification until the U.S. government had a chance to assess its functioning). In those days, though, we didn’t have a six and a half year body of work fighting overseas for which to be assailed by our enemies before an international tribunal. The prospect of having our troops tried by a foreign body is quite a bit more real now.
Even so, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Obama fully embrace the ICC if he serves two terms. First, it is inconsistent with Obama’s position on America’s proper relationship with the world for us to resist joining the ICC. Second, it is far from clear that, once free from the burden of facing the electorate, Obama would see anything very problematic about American soldiers being tried by international prosecutors.
-
-
Most Read on Power Line
Donate to PL
-
Our Favorites
- American Greatness
- American Mind
- American Story
- American Thinker
- Aspen beat
- Babylon Bee
- Belmont Club
- Churchill Project
- Claremont Institute
- Daily Torch
- Federalist
- Gatestone Institute
- Hollywood in Toto
- Hoover Institution
- Hot Air
- Hugh Hewitt
- InstaPundit
- Jewish World Review
- Law & Liberty
- Legal Insurrection
- Liberty Daily
- Lileks
- Lucianne
- Michael Ramirez Cartoons
- Michelle Malkin
- Pipeline
- RealClearPolitics
- Ricochet
- Steyn Online
- Tim Blair
Media
Subscribe to Power Line by Email
Temporarily disabled
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.