HOIST ON HIS OWN PETARD :

A Treaty Bush Shouldn't 'Unsign' DAVID J. SCHEFFER, April 6, 2002, NY Times)

President Bush recently said that although the campaign reform bill he signed on March 27 is "flawed," it would "improve the current system overall." Similar reasoning led to President Bill Clinton's decision to sign the Rome treaty in 2000.

The treaty that Mr. Scheffer is complaining about would create a permanent "international criminal court", that would expose American citizens to judgments which by definition would not come from a body of their peers. In fact, as we see resentment of America's status as the world's sole superpower (actually, with the precipitous decline of Russia and England, I wonder if it isn't time to consider the possibility that we are close to being the world's only power, the only nation [with the exception of Israel, which is a virtual American satellite] that maintains a truly formidable, non-nuclear, military), the court might well consist of judges, prosecutors, and jurors whose national interests are antithetical to America's.

President Bush's recent signing of the Campaign Finance Reform (CFR) bill was a horrible mistake, one for which the Brothers believe he should be impeached (along with every congressman who voted for it), but it was at least an entirely predictable and traditional instance of the tyranny of the majority. It is one of the fundamental weaknesses of democracy that at any given moment the majority can strip the minority of their constitutional rights and, unless the Court is willing to defy public opinion, which it seldom is in these cases, can get away with it.

But the international criminal court represents something entirely different and truly frightening, the ceding of American sovereignty to non-Americans and the subjecting of our citizens to the machinations of a tribunal over which America and Americans have no control. Where are the voices of all the folks who shriek about the injustice of President Bush's military tribunals for terrorists and the Taliban when we now face international tribunals for Americans? How can it be wrong to try a foreign member of al Qaeda under tribunal rules but okay to try an American under foreign tribunal rules?

President Bush can't redeem the abhorrent signature he put on CFR, but it is absolutely essential that he remove America's signature from the Rome treaty.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 8, 2002 9:38 AM