Rethinking peacekeeping

Late last week, President Bush once again showed the stuff of which he is made. On the margins of his meeting with other G-8 leaders in Canada, Mr. Bush decided that the United States would exercise its Security Council veto to block U.N. peacekeeping mandates that failed to protect U.S. forces from the predations of an unaccountable International Criminal Court (ICC). To the horror of the State Department, foreign diplomats and other ICC enthusiasts, the first such veto was cast on Sunday, blocking a six-month extension of the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

President Says No to Global Kangaroo Court
by JohnHuang2
May 7, 2002

Well, so much for George W. Bush, The-Globalist, New-World-Order-Socialist-Traitor flap-doodle gobbledygook.

No difference between Gore and Bush, eh? The President's spunky decision to yank the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court -- already the move has sparked a cacophony of 'outrage' from all the usual, sniveling suspects -- illustrates with glaring clarity the rank fallacy in that argument. The pullout comes as a 'shocking surprise', alright -- to quibbling nay-sayers who don't know diddley-squat about George W. Bush, the man. For those who know him, Bush is unflappable, unflinching and unblinking, and there was never any question mark. For skeptics, his gutsy decision to junk Kyoto early on should have been the tip-off. Dittos his scrapping the ABM "accords."

The "treaty" at issue, lest we forget, was signed with wild enthusiasm by (none-other-than) Bill Clinton, Bush's predecessor -- a Democrat, last I checked. A 'president' Gore, corrupt and globalist in his outlook as X42, wouldn't dare overrule him, as this President has decided to do.

To Bush, the I.C.C. is an abomination, a mockery of justice, an affront to U.S. sovereignty, to our constitution. It would open the floodgates for politically-driven prosecutions and harassment of Americans.

To every two-bit I.C.C. windbag "prosecutor" with a grudge, this 'court' is, in every respect, a wet dream come true. No American would be safe from these parasites, nor from the clutches of this Kangaroo "court".

At a more fundamental level, Bush sees the I.C.C. as a brazen assault on our core values -- our bedrock conception of basic jurisprudence, specifically. The I.C.C. charter imbues this world tribunal with unfettered supremacy, functioning as Criminal, Appellate and Supreme Court, all rolled up into one. Checks and balances? Due-process? Fuggedaboutit. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see how this Draconian 'court', unchecked and uncorked, becomes the spawning ground for arbitrary, crotchety decisions and egregious abuse. Justice and the U.N.: To Bush, that's an oxymoron.

But Washington's decision to reject I.C.C. is more than just fancy footwork, or demarche: The United States will actively seek to undercut I.C.C. by simultaneously repudiating the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The Bush administration asserts the U.S. will not be restricted by the 1969 pact, which obligates all nations to comply with international treaties, despite being a signatory. Article 18 forbids signatories from 'undercutting' treaties they sign, whether or not they are ratified.

This President is a trailblazer: Palitha Kohona, U.N. treaty section chief, denounced the move to dump I.C.C. as unprecedented. Never before has a signatory nation unilaterally removed its signature, he griped.

These actions, I submit, are not the deeds of a coward: It takes spine, it takes grit, it takes fearless courage to go in-your-face against this mother-of-all-sacred cows, unilaterally, with no friends, nor allies. Bush knows the media will savage him for this: The attacks will be vicious, cruel, unrelenting. But in George W. Bush, you don't have your typical, 'stick-a-moist-finger-in-the-wind' politician. He doesn't need polls, he doesn't need focus groups to tell him what to do, what to say, what to think. He's a patriot who puts America First -- to heck with the media, the U.N., the E.U., the Democrats.

Nor is this the portrait of a timid, spineless, pusillanimous milksop, as some of Bush's conservative critics depict him. ('Bush will cave', they wrongly predicted.) Even President Reagan never went this far: Rather than zapping Carter's signature to Protocol 1, an amendment to the Geneva Conventions broadening 'protections' to members of guerilla movements, instead the Reagan administration opted in 1987 to not seek formal ratification.

Make no mistake: With this action, the I.C.C. treaty becomes a corpse, a veritable dead-letter. But....but...but, haven't all European Union countries signed and -- with only one temporary exception -- ratified I.C.C.? Haven't many nations throughout Asia, Africa and the Mideast also signed and ratified? (For the record, a total of sixty-six countries have signed and/or ratified I.C.C., six more than needed to activate the treaty, set to go into effect on July 1, 2002.)

Yes, and so what?

Memo to Globalists: Put this in your pipe and smoke it: America is, and shall remain, the world's sole superpower. No other nation even comes close. America is, and shall remain, a sovereign, self-governing free republic. No despotic global tribunal shall have jurisdiction over citizens of this free republic.

Moreover, terrorists who commit crimes against the United States, will be tried by the United States, not by the U.N., the I.C.C. nor Kofi Annan. A 'global treaty' without us isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Any questions?

In this clash between globalism and sovereignty, between the U.S. and the U.N., the U.S. will win out, mark my words.

Two more points:

1) Bush's 'unsigning' of the I.C.C. treaty constitutes the sharpest reprimand of Mr. Clinton to date. This action is a humiliating defeat for X42, who signed the treaty as one of his last acts of defiance (December, 2000).

2) In adamantly endorsing this treaty, the American left stands revealed for the liars and hypocrites they are. Liberals, who feign 'concern' over 'due-process' and courtroom fairness, who wail and moan over military tribunals for al-Qaeda terrorists, are all a ga-ga for the I.C.C., where checks-and-balances are non-existent and prosecutors are answerable to no one. In effect, lefties care more for the 'rights' of Osama Bin Laden than they do for fellow citizens.

Surprise, surprise.

Thank God Al Gore is not President.

Anyway, that's....

My two cents
"JohnHuang2"
Copyright Enrique N. ©2001

(WASHINGTON--JULY 1, 2002)

Today, U.S. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-IL), chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, made the following statement regarding consideration by the United Nations Security Council of options for renewing the mandate for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia:

"I commend the Bush Administration for its dogged efforts in the United Nations Security Council to defend American sovereignty.

No one should expect the United States to deploy its Armed Forces around the world on humanitarian missions on behalf of the United Nations if those forces are to be exposed to prosecution by a United Nations court whose jurisdiction we reject. Other countries can ask us to send our Armed Forces on such missions, as we have done in Bosnia. Or they can insist on the purported right of the International Criminal Court to prosecute United Nations peacekeepers in places like Bosnia. But it is arrogant for anyone to suggest that we must simultaneously keep our Armed Forces in places like Bosnia and acquiesce in United Nations claims of criminal jurisdiction over them.

I find it bizarre that some countries appear to be more interested in exercising criminal jurisdiction over Americans than they are in enhancing the effectiveness of United Nations peacekeeping efforts around the world.

I am particularly puzzled by the claim that granting immunity from the International Criminal Court to United Nations peacekeepers will somehow provide comfort to rogue regimes. The solution to this problem, if it is a problem, is to prevent rogue regimes from participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations. It is not to treat all participants in United Nations operations as if they were rogue regimes."

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