April 22, 2002

By Tom DeWeese

A stunned former President George W. Bush sat in the docket of the United Nation's International Criminal Court listening to the charges brought against him. The year is 2009 and, among the charges, is genocide against the Iraqi people, when the US invaded Iraq to replace its leadership in 2002.

The former US President had been captured at his ranch in Beaufort, Texas, after he received what he thought was a delegation of Mexican diplomats. They were, in fact, Mexican commandos deputized by the United Nations to take Bush into custody. His small staff of Secret Service agents were quickly disarmed and the former President was whisked from his ranch by helicopter and, from Mexico City, taken by jet to Belgium where the Court's permanent headquarters had been established.

Formal protests were filed by the President and the Department of State, noting that the United States Senate had rejected the treaty that had been signed by former President Bill Clinton on December 31,2000, a month prior to leaving office. A UN spokesman said that the Court had long asserted its authority even over those nations that were not signatories.

Cases are pending against a number of US generals and other military personnel for their role in the war that, in fact, had included some civilian deaths, but what most observers had concluded was not an unlikely toll of "collateral damage."

This is a fictional scenario, but the International Criminal Court is not fiction. It will formally come into existence on July 1, 2002, after the final ten nations needed to ratify the Rome treaty gave their approval. A celebration of the permanent Court was held on Thursday, April 11, 2002. It is authorized to judge cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

It is unknown at this time if Congress will pass Rep. Ron Paul's "American Service member and Citizen Protection Act of 2002" which is intended to protect Americans from prosecution by the Court, prohibit the use of US taxpayer funds for the Court, and deems ICC actions against US service personnel acts of aggression against America.

Under the terms of the ICC, the U.S. Constitution will provide no protection whatsoever for any American citizen taken into custody by the UN Court. This totally negates Article III of the Constitution that states "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

The United States maintains military personnel in 146 nations around the world and in all of the oceans and seas. Calls for ICC action against Israel have already been issued. The Charter of the United Nations does not grant it the right to have such a court. There cannot be any "laws" issued by the United Nations, but that has not stopped its relentless effort to establish itself as a global government with power over all sovereign nations.

Opponents of the United Nations have long warned and argued against the UN's acquisition of powers not enumerated in its Charter, but nonetheless granted over the years through a myriad of international treaties, conventions, and protocols.

The United Nations must be rejected for the same reason an earlier Congress rejected the League of Nations following World War I. There is only one answer to this creeping strangulation of the right of nations to conduct their own affairs and that is for the United States to withdraw its support.

Without our participation and our funding, the United Nations will implode of its own dead weight. It must be totally disassembled and thrown into the ashcan of history.