Monday, January 25, 2010

Move Over Murphy, There's a New 'Law' in Town

As we have learned to our dismay here in Canada with our delightful "human rights" system, once you set up a mechanism that has the power to punish those who step out of line with the prevalent ideology, even if your intentions were good at the outset, that mechanism will likely morph into something monstrous. The UN's execrable "human rights" outfit offers one more example of what, for the sake of succinctness (and because I can up with it), I will call Scaramouche's Law; the International Criminal Court in the Hague provides another, as per this from the Jerusalem Post:
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has become a forum for assaulting freedom and the rule of law. It should surprise no one - and distress anyone who cares about democracy - that a criminal complaint has been filed against former US president George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney and much of the former US administration.

The complaint was filed by a radical professor from the University of Illinois College of Law, Francis Boyle, whose obsequious appeal to the ICC's prosecutor expresses "doubt... that the accused would have inflicted these criminal practices upon 100 white Judeo-Christian men."

Boyle, who has previously argued that the US should stop illegally occupying Hawaii, that Iran should sue the US to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities and sanctions, and that Israel practices genocide, accuses US officials of extraordinary rendition and torture, among other things.

The US is not a party to the ICC precisely because political considerations would make Americans the likely target of absurd attacks like Boyle's. Ridiculous as it is, however, because the complaint alleges that illegal acts occurred within nations that are parties to the ICC, the court's prosecutor could technically consider launching an investigation and eventually try to assert jurisdiction.

While it is unlikely that the US would ever extradite American officials to The Hague for trial, one never knows with the current administration. And either way, it puts former American officials, who must contemplate, at the very least, whether to hire legal counsel or to provide any sort of response, in a difficult position.

The Obama administration has taken a far more sympathetic view of the ICC and other international bodies that are critical of the US, while opening the door to possible domestic prosecutions for alleged torture. Yet, it would be a huge mistake not to condemn the latest effort to slander America at The Hague - not the least of which is because Obama is likely to face similar charges someday for the same "extraordinary rendition" practices...
Transnationalist Obama in the ICC dock? Wouldn't that be the irony to end all ironies?

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