Loading...by Patrick J. Buchanan – July 28, 1998
“As American objections to the treaty’s text were trounced in one overwhelming vote after another, delegates … stood and cheered.” Thus does The Washington Post describe the reaction, as the final votes were taken in Rome to establish a permanent global court for prosecuting war criminals.
The tribunal will have 18 judges and a staff of investigators and prosecutors free to roam the world, conducting show trials of alleged war criminals, including U.S. soldiers. The accused — let us say the U.S. captain of the Vincennes, which mistakenly downed an Iranian airliner — would enjoy few of the rights guaranteed by our Fifth and Sixth amendments.
America would have no oversight of court operations, no veto of court decisions.
If the United States objected to an indictment, say, of Ronald Reagan for his strike on Libya, who would decide if Reagan was put in the dock, in absentia? According to the treaty, “Any dispute concerning the court’s jurisdiction shall be settled by the decision of the Court.”
A set of proposals offered to meet major U.S. concerns was rejected 115-17. Even liberals were stunned at the joyful routing of U.S. positions. A “diplomatic train wreck,” said the Post, “an end to one of the most ambitious ventures in the Clinton administration to multilateral management of the world’s problems.”
Yet good can come out of Rome. For the architects of the New World Order over-reached. Invoking their one-nation, one-vote formula, they conducted a naked power grab at the expense of our Republic and then laughed in America’s face.
Not smart, fellas, for not only is this treaty seriously dead in Jesse Helms’ foreign relations committee, the Clintonites, for their own protection, will have to join in killing it. Moreover, the raw anti-American bias on display in Rome may awaken the slumbering giant of American patriotism and do for globalism what George III’s colonial tax policy did for his American empire.
Rather than fighting these battles one front at a time, “small r” republicans need to step back and take a long look at the vast and elaborate superstructure that is rising. For what, ultimately, are all these transnational institutions — the U.N., WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc., all about — but part of a veiled scheme for the transfer of money, prestige, power and sovereignty from America to a new class of parasite-mandarins, slavering to control the destiny of mankind.
As the United States was being slam-dunked on vote after vote, mocked as well, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan cooed that the new court is a “gift of hope to future generations and a giant step forward in the march toward universal human rights and the rule of law.”
Of course Kofi would see it that way. After all, he hails from an inconsequential little country on a mendicant continent that has distinguished itself lately for coups, massacres and AIDS. Yet he has risen to the apex of a towering bureaucratic pyramid, which will be further enriched and empowered if this court comes into being.
But, ask yourself: By whose approval is Kofi Anan paid a salary larger than that of the president? Who subsidizes his apartment and travels, and pays the U.S. taxes from which Kofi is exempt as one of a vast throng of “international civil servants”? Who endowed the prestigious chair on which this peacock sits to lecture the United States? Who created his upholstered playpen and plays host to the richly remunerated bureaucracy over which Kofi presides?
We did, we Americans. Now, ask yourself: Who would be the big losers if an angry nation rose up and defunded the IMF, the U.N., the World Bank, the WTO and all the rest; and told them all to pack up and get out? Correct. Kofi and his global parasites. They would be out of our lives, out of our pockets, out of our country.
And how would we suffer from not having them around? We seemed to do just fine before they all turned up.
The New World Order is being built on a fallacy and a scam. The fallacy is that “all nations are created equal” and each has an equal right to determine the world’s destiny.
The scam is that the misery of the world’s failed nations is our fault and, therefore, we “owe” them. And how are we supposed to make amends for our sins of colonialism, imperialism and racism? By transferring wealth and power to Kofi ,et al., who will show us the way to a more equitable and just world order. Like Esau, we are permitting ourselves to be swindled of our heritage of independence for a mess of potage.
How should we deal with these snake-oil salesmen? The same way that the town dealt with the phony Duke and Dauphin in “Huck Finn” — tar and feather ’em, and ride ’em out on a rail.