Maybe, just maybe, The Washington Times should stop repeating tired old neocon tropes about how the International Criminal Court is going to lock up Dick “Bambi” Cheney and other God-fearing Americans:

Mr. Obama and his representatives have now gone further than any other previous administration in empowering the ICC. On Thursday, top Obama administration officials offered support for implementing the war crimes indictment issued in July against Sudanese President Omar Bashir for his role in the genocide and war crimes - crimes that have resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 people and the displacement of 2.5 million. A panel of judges is deliberating whether to issue Mr. Bashir’s arrest warrant. . . .

Mr. Obama wants to show the world that the United States is serious about protecting human rights. But our commander-in-chief must be even more zealous in showing Americans that he will first and foremost - and at all times - safeguard us from our rivals and opponents whose primary motives might very well be to hamstring and diminish our current global preeminence in making the world safer.

Oh. My. God.  Did you hear?  The ICC wants to prosecute Omar al-Bashir.  I mean what has he done?  Okay, other than Darfur.  And a fifteen-year war against the southern half of his country.  And provide Osama bin Laden with sanctuary for a while.  But come on.  He’s so much fun at parties!

Maybe the WaTimes should stop worrying about the ICC and instead focus its outrage over reports that the Pakistani High Court has released confessed nuclear smuggler A.Q. Khan from house detention.  Someone should arrest this guy, maybe bring him to trial.  Of course, that would require an international institution capable of investigating and prosecuting the worst of the worst — people like Bashir; Joseph Kony, the insane leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army; and Khan himself.

An institution like, oh, I don’t know, the International Criminal Court.

Too bad they’re busy prosecuting Americans — which, contrary to the fever dreams of the WaTimes, they’re not.  Here’s the reality.

1.  Even if the Obama Administration decides to reverse Bush’s unsigning of the ICC treaty, the United States Senate is unlikely to ratify it anytime in the near future.

2.  Even if the U.S. were to join the treaty tomorrow, the Court could not prosecute Bush Administration officials because a) the alleged “crimes” took place before the U.S. was a party to the treaty; and b) the treaty has a provision, known as complementarity, which says that in cases where a state has a functioning legal system and acts in good faith to investigate and adjudicate allegations of such crimes, the court has no jurisdiction.

3.  In fact, the only way the Court could investigate U.S. officials would be through a Security Council referral, which would require the United States not to veto.  And not even the WaTimes believes that the Obama team would allow that to happen.

4.  To date, the court has demonstrated admirable restraint in choosing not to investigate reported war crimes by troops in Iraq, refusing to pursue investigations into allegations against British forces, citing the principle of complementarity as the reason for its non-action.

5.  The court also has refused calls for it to investigate the United States, pointing quite sensibly to the fact that the U.S. is not a state party.

6.  Contrary to the Boltonites allegations, the court has not turned into a kangaroo court focused on political prosecutions.  Instead, it is investigating serious allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic.

To be clear, Pakistan is not a state party to the ICC treaty, so the Court could only investigate Khan were it to have the case referred to it by the Security Council (something that China is unlikely to allow).  And even were Pakistan a state party, I think it could be plausibly argued that the Pakistani court system has acted in a manner consistent with the idea of complementarity (although it also could be argued that the government’s decision not to investigate the allegations does not meet that standard).

But hey, it’s far more fun to make stuff up than it is to be angry at genuine outrages.

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