Loading...by Patrick J. Buchanan – June 19, 1998
A majority of U.N. members is today moving resolutely to give
supranational institutions sovereign authority greater than that
of nations. Through these institutions, and the extension of the
one-nation, one-vote principle, the United Nations hopes to
overturn the old order, where great powers decided the affairs
of men, and to create a new world order where the global
majority rules…
Weaned on freedom, ever-jealous of its independence, the United States, it is now clear, is the last major obstacle to world government.
Consider: In Rome, delegates from 156 nations are creating an International Criminal Court to prosecute the soldiers and leaders of any nation it finds guilty of “crimes against humanity,” including our own. Like the monster of the Frankenstein films, the United Nations has begun to assert a power and authority above that of its creators.
What the United Nations envisions, says The New York Times, “is a kind of global Nuremberg, a permanent court where individuals accused of atrocities and genocide can be tried and punished.”
Unsurprisingly, the Clintonites support an ICC, but they want the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to decide who is prosecuted. China, France and Russia agree, but Britain is siding with the majority at Rome, insisting the ICC be independent of the Security Council and free to decide whom to prosecute and punish.
Canada also demands that the ICC not be subject to a Security Council veto. “We want to make it very clear to those who are trying to compromise down to the lowest common denominator that they have no chance,” said Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy; the new tribunal must have “power, teeth” and “reach.”
Sensing victory, Secretary General Kofi Annan is exploiting our isolation at Rome to coerce us to accept his enlarged vision of an ICC or feel the lash of world opinion. “No one country,” he says, “will want to be responsible for the failure of this conference.”
We want a “court with teeth,” he writes in London’s Financial Times, “where ‘acting under orders’ is no defense and … all individuals in a government hierarchy or military chain of command, without exception, from rulers to private soldiers, must answer for their actions.”
“The road to this landmark gathering,” he adds, “has led through some of the darkest moments in history. We have seen the extermination of indigenous peoples and the barbaric trade in African slaves. Our own century has seen the invention and use of weapons of mass destruction. … ”
Now, since the greatest such weapon of mass destruction ever invented and used was the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, one wonders if Kofi Annan believes Gen. George Marshall and Harry Truman should have been put in an ICC dock.
Can there be any doubt left about the agenda of the globalists? Set aside the rhetoric about law and justice, the goal is power — the transfer of power from this republic to international bureaucrats.
A majority of U.N. members is today moving resolutely to give supranational institutions sovereign authority greater than that of nations. Through these institutions, and the extension of the one-nation, one-vote principle, the United Nations hopes to overturn the old order, where great powers decided the affairs of men, and to create a new world order where the global majority rules.
But for the United States to allow that to happen would be a betrayal of the idea of “Independence Forever!” that was the vision of the founding fathers and the deathbed toast of the old patriot John Adams. Why would America yield an ounce of its sovereignty to a global court?
Most of the tyrants of the 20th century whom we did not destroy in war or prosecute ourselves died in bed.
Lenin, the arch terrorist of the 20th century, lies in honor in Red Square; Stalin died in bed, and his remains are in the Kremlin wall. Mao, the greatest mass murderer of them all, is in a crystal sarcophagus in Beijing. Ho Chi Minh died in bed and is considered the George Washington of Vietnam; Pol Pot also died in bed. Idi Amin is alive and well in Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia’s Col. Mengistu is living in Zimbabwe. Fidel Castro is enjoying life and power in Havana, and Saddam Hussein rules Iraq.
What could an ICC have done to any of them if the great powers could not call them to account? Who, then, is this ICC going to indict? And who is going to be sent out to make arrests for this permanent Nuremberg tribunal? Without an army of its own, the ICC is going to have to rely on the most powerful U.N. nations to arrest the war criminals it alone decides to prosecute. And guess who that is.
Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has declared the ICC dead on arrival in the Senate. The entire Congress should also pass a joint resolution that the United States will not assist an ICC created against our wishes, will not fund it, will not permit it to operate on U.S. territory and will work for its early dissolution. We do not need any more institutions that trample on our national sovereignty.