Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published July 10, 2002

The International Criminal Court

For years now, we have heard the John Birchers and others call for our government to "Get us out of the UN!" Most of us paid them no mind because we knew it was never going to happen, and besides, they are just a bunch of right-wing fruitcakes anyway.

Even though the United Nations has degenerated into a bloated bureaucracy, dominated by corrupt banana-republic socialist dictators, we have always felt it is politically correct for us to continue to participate, and, of course, to provide most of its funding. But it's becoming more difficult to disagree with the call of the Birchers when at every hand it seems the primary purpose of the organization is to dominate and undermine the best interests of the United States of America.

It wasn't enough that the UN, under the guise of environmental protection, now controls Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountain National Park, among others. Or that our military is being forced to serve under the command and the flag of the United Nations. But as of July 2, 2002, we, as United States citizens, are now subject to the jurisdiction of a United Nations International Criminal Court.

Now, our government isn't totally without blame in getting us into this mess. One of President Clinton's final acts the night of Dec. 31, 1999, was to sign a treaty indicating our acceptance of the Court's authority. In placing his signature, Clinton said, "Court jurisdictions over U.S. personnel should come only with U.S. ratification of the treaty. The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the Court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction." (Please note the use of the word "should.") Well, it didn't work out that way.

President Bush has come out strongly against the U.S. being subject to the jurisdiction of this International Court, and has promised to fight any Congressional effort to ratify the treaty signed by Clinton. But under the terms of this international statute, citizens of any nation can now be arrested regardless of whether or not their governing bodies have ratified the treaty. Of course we don't like that, but to whom do you appeal the authority of a Muslim-dominated World Court? Allah?

So what does this all mean? It means that for the first time in U.S. history, our military personnel serving abroad, or just plain U.S. citizens who are traveling in any of the 138 - mostly third-world - countries who have adopted this world court, can be arrested, tried and convicted for any number of trumped-up charges under the generalized term of an "act of aggression." And who defines a UN "act of aggression?" Pursuant to Article 39 of the UN Charter, the UN Security Council "shall determine" the existence of an "act of aggression." And who is the current president of the UN Security Council? Mr. Farouk Al-Sharaa, the UN Ambassador from Syria!

And what are the Syrian ambassador's credentials to be an arbiter of justice for the International Criminal Court? Syria is one of the 12 nations identified by President Bush as supporters and sponsors of world terrorism. The State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001 reports: "The government of Syria has not been implicated directly in an act of terrorism since 1986, but it continued in 2001 to provide safe haven and logistics support to a number of terrorist groups." The key word is "directly." But how about indirectly?

The State Department report says, "Damascus (the capital of Syria) is the primary transit point for the transfer of Iranian-supplied weapons to Hezbollah." The Hezbollah is a radical Shiite Muslim group formed in Lebanon, and suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-U.S. terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. In addition, Syria supports such terrorist groups as:

·Ahmad Jabril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command;

·Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ);

·Abu Misa's Fatah-the-Intifada;

·George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine;

·Hamas, which maintains offices in Damascus; and

·Provides refuge and basing privileges in Syrian controlled Bekaa Valley for Hezbollah, Hamas, PFLP-GC, PIJ, and other terrorist organizations.

Within the past couple of days, you have seen news reports of how American troops have been accused of mistakenly bombing an Afghanistan wedding party. We have either caused the hospitalization of only four children, or killed 250 and wounded additional hundreds, depending upon which news network you watched - honest! But already the Afghans are calling for International Criminal Court prosecution of the airmen involved. And should Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld venture abroad, he could be arrested, tried and convicted for having ordered this unfortunate "act of aggression." Read it. It's all in the fine print.

So maybe, just maybe, the call of the John Birchers to get us out of the UN isn't such a crack-pot idea after all.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.