Is Obama Going To Allow US Soldiers To Be Tried By International Courts?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “great regret” in August that the U.S. is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has fueled speculation that the Obama administration may reverse another Bush policy and sign up for what could lead to the trial of Americans for war crimes in The Hague.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan.
Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC’s founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory, even those from nontreaty countries, fall under the ICC’s oversight, Mr. Ocampo told me. And the chief prosecutor says he is already conducting a “preliminary examination” into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.
“We have to check if crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide have been committed in Afghanistan,” Mr. Ocampo told me. “There are serious allegations against the Taliban and al Qaeda and serious allegations about warlords, even against some who are connected with members of the government.” Taking up his inquiry of Allied soldiers, he added, “there are different reports about problems with bombings and there are also allegations about torture.”
It was clear who the targets of these particular inquiries are but the chief prosecutor shied away from spelling it out.
Asked repeatedly whether the examination of bombings and torture allegations refers to NATO and U.S. soldiers, Mr. Ocampo finally stated that “we are investigating whoever commits war crimes, including the group you mentioned.”
The big problem with the ICC is that it gives a foreign court jurisdiction over American citizens. We Americans have a constitution guaranteeing us certain unalienable rights, and entire body of body of casework and precedence that, while far from perfect, largely ensures that those rights are protected. In an international court, these things don’t exist. Meaning that if Obama were to sign on to the ICC we could see our soldiers and our diplomats and our intelligence agents extradited to another country to be handed over to a court that was not convened under our Constitution.
Such a move would undoubtedly meet constitutional challenges and would make Obama, who is already not exactly popular in military circles, even less so. Because imagine being tasked with serving your country in a war zone with the grim specter of an international court, put together by an international community that would love to hold show trials not for the sake of justice but for the sake of embarrassing your country politically, looming over your head should you make a mistake.
It’s not fair. And what’s more, we don’t need the ICC. We are more than capable of trying our own citizens for international crimes, and do so on a regular basis. Our soldiers who have been accused of wrong-doing have stood trial. And some of them have been convicted and jailed. Justice served. Perhaps not in the fashion those (both domestic and international) would like, but then they aren’t exactly seeking justice either.
The other possibility here is that Obama, who has promised not to put the Bush administration on trial, might be thinking about exporting that to this international court. Can you imagine how some in the international community would love to subpoena Karl Rove? Or Dick Cheney? Or Donald Rumsfeld? They’re no doubt drooling at the idea, but allowing such nonsense would set a dangerous precedent whereby our political leaders are held accountable for foreigners motivated, again, more by politics than justice.
Remember, Obama himself just sent more troops into Afghanistan. Liberals might love the idea of Bush administration members going to trial in an international court, but what if that court turned its attention to the Obama administration?
I think we’d see the left singing a different tune.
What we need to remember is that we are a sovereign nation. If any US citizen needs to be indicted for a crime, then we should do it within our own criminal justice system. And if that’s not possible now, then we should change our domestic rules so that it is possible. We don’t need to be bending to the whims of some foreign court.
