Rubio is right: Dismantle the ICC now
by Editorial Board · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Despite the whining from the Lilliputians of international law, for the sake of our national security and sovereignty, the administration is right to move against the International Criminal Court.
The ICC was established in 2002 by the Rome Statute. It was organized initially to prosecute the gravest international offenses. To date, 125 countries have ratified the treaty. The United States has not.
Successive presidents have refused to submit the ICC’s enabling treaty to the Senate for ratification because they have been told in no uncertain terms that it has no support there.
Among other obscenities, the ICC has indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip while fighting the terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. That is why New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani claims he has the authority to arrest the Israeli leader if he sets foot in New York.
The ICC is controlled by the same thugs in charge of the United Nations: terrorist states, Islamist regimes, totalitarians and globalists. In 2020, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, launched an investigation into what she called war crimes by U.S. forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since then, there have been calls to prosecute immigration agents for deporting illegal alien criminals, President Trump for authorizing strikes against narcotics boats in the Caribbean and our recent efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in violation of international law.
When a group of 12 senators wrote to the ICC’s chief prosecutor complaining about these proposed moves, the prosecutor’s office accused them of violations of international law. Taking issue with the ICC is now a crime.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the administration’s campaign to abolish the ICC. He has proposed several moves, including travel bans on ICC personnel, visa revocations and diplomatic pressure to get other nations to withdraw from the court.
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The thought of American military personnel, immigration agents, law enforcement officers and elected leaders seized by a foreign entity and tried outside the United States by Third World judges for alleged violations of a treaty this nation never ratified should be enough to make the blood boil.
One of the Colonists’ grievances against King George III, listed in the Declaration of Independence, was “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”
We did not shrug off a king 250 years ago to have him replaced by the tyrants of a global tribunal.
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