CFR, Brookings Celebrate Obama “Lovefest” for International Criminal Court

Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

On April 16, 2013, Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, published a rhapsodic paean to the Obama administration’s “honeymoon” and “lovefest” with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Earlier this month, the Brookings Institution hosted what would have been unthinkable a decade ago: a fulsome discussion, at times an outright lovefest, between officials from the U.S. government and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, lauded Washington for bolstering the court’s efforts to bring war criminals to justice.”

Thus begins the article, “America’s Honeymoon With the ICC: Will Washington’s Love for International Law Last?” penned by Professor David Kaye of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.

“For the first time,” writes Kaye, “the United States is not only cooperating with the ICC but encouraging cooperation and information-sharing with the court, which is based in The Hague.”

“In short, although the United States is not a party to the ICC’s charter, the Rome Statute, it is arguably doing as much as, if not more than, member states are doing to bolster the work of the court,” enthuses Prof. Kaye. He approvingly reports, “U.S. officials enthusiastically attend the ICC’s annual meetings “ and “speak in support of the court at the UN Security Council.”

Prof. Kaye reports:

In February 2011, Washington voted with a unanimous UN Security Council to refer the worsening situation in Libya to the ICC. The same year, Obama sent 100 U.S. military advisers to central Africa to train local troops tracking down Kony and other members of the LRA wanted by the ICC…

“Even more remarkable, the administration’s embrace of the court has been met with little, if any, resistance from Congress,” notes Kaye.

As we reported here last year, “Big Push for UN’s International Criminal Court,”

The push is on to empower the International Criminal Court, the United Nations’ global tribunal that claims universal jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. Over the past year, the Obama administration, acting primarily through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been ratcheting up the campaign to legitimize the ICC as a global prosecutor and Supreme Court.

Together with a coterie of think tanks, media allies, and non-governmental organizations, the administration is attempting to establish precedents for U.S. participation in, and support for, the ICC action agenda, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. Senate has not ratified the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the ICC.

We pointed out in that article that CFR member David Kaye is one of the chief promoters of an empowered ICC. We reported:

Now as in years past, the key promotion and support for empowering the ICC both inside and outside of the administration emanates from Pratt House, the New York City headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

It was council members and the council’s journal, Foreign Affairs, that laid the groundwork in the 1990s for the UN’s 1998 ICC summit in Rome. It was the big tax-exempt foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, MacArthur, Soros) run by CFR globalists that provided the funding for the human rights NGO rent-a-mobs that materialized to provide global grass-roots support for the ICC.

In 2011, the CFR focused anew on the ICC. In its May/June 2011 issue, Foreign Affairs published “Who’s Afraid of the International Criminal Court? Finding the Prosecutor Who Can Set It Straight,” by David Kaye, executive director of the International Human Rights Program at the UCLA School of Law.

In the past few months, the CFR also issued a Council Special Report entitled, “Justice Beyond The Hague: Supporting the Prosecution of International Crimes in National Courts,” also by Professor Kaye.

CFR “Mothership” Guides State Department

In a July 2009 speech at the CFR’s new Washington, D.C. headquarters, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was introduced by CFR President Richard Haass, who has infamously editorialized in favor of world government and ending America’s national sovereignty, claiming “states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies.”

Following her introduction by Haass, Clinton referred to the CFR’s New York Pratt House as her “mother ship” and confessed that the State Department looks to the CFR “to be told what we should be doing and how we should think.” In a remarkable admission, Clinton said:

Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.

The official State Department text of Hillary Clinton’s CFR speech can found here and a short YouTube video of the same opening remarks quoted above can be viewed below.

Concerning the ICC, as with almost all other issues, Hillary’s State Department faithfully followed the CFR’s guidance regarding “what we should be doing and how we should think.” That has not changed under her successor, CFR member John Kerry. On March 22 of this year, Secretary of State Kerry issued a statement of support for the ICC’s prosecution of accused Congolese rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda.

The New American has been in the forefront of the battle to stop surrender of U.S. sovereignty and independence to the ICC, even before the institution was established. Our April 13, 1998 article, “International Injustice,” was the first major alarm to be sounded about the Clinton administration’s plans to entangle the U.S. in this UN project. In July of 1998, this reporter journeyed to Rome to attend the founding conference of the ICC, and provided a blow-by-blow account of the incredible machinations, deception and subversion that occurred there in “Courting Global Tyranny.”

We noted that distinguished constitutionalist scholars had warned of the ICC’s dangers:

Dr. Charles Rice, professor of law at Notre Dame University, has termed the ICC “a monster,” both in concept and reality, noting that it effectively “repudiates the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and cancels the 4th of July.” “In our system,” Professor Rice explains, “law is supposed to be a rule of reason which, in a sense, controls the state and compels the state to operate under the law.” But the superjurisdictional ICC, he points out, has no legitimate basis for its claimed authority, no protections against abuses, no accountability, and virtually no limits to its jurisdiction. “What are the limits on the ICC?” he asks, and then answers, “There are none. It’s insane!”

In numerous articles (see below) we have pointed out, among other things, that in spite of their incessant prattling about dedication to transparency, the globalists have been obdurately opaque about key features of the ICC, such as:

No right to a trial by a jury of ones peers;

No right to habeas corpus;

No right to bail;

No right to a speedy trial;

No protection against indefinite pre-trial detention;

No protection against being transported to foreign lands.

Nevertheless, under the CFR’s direction, the Obama administration is pushing forth to subject America and Americans to the jurisdiction of this — as Professor Rice aptly calls it — monster. What should be most disturbing to American citizens who treasure their freedoms guaranteed under our Constitution is Prof. Kaye’s remark cited earlier, to wit: “Even more remarkable, the administration’s embrace of the court has been met with little, if any, resistance from Congress.”

Remarkable indeed — and deplorable. Republicans, who made a big fuss over the ICC when President Clinton embarked on a campaign to embrace the tribunal, thought they had a stalwart foe of the ICC in President George W. Bush. At first, Bush blustered a great deal about the ICC to placate his base, but then eased into an accommodation with the court.

Prof. Kaye reports:

U.S. opposition softened during Bush’s second term. In 2005, Bush did not veto the UN Security Council’s referral of the Darfur conflict to the court. In addition, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opened channels of communication with ICC officials.

Condoleezza Rice, of course, is a longtime member of the CFR, as were many other Cabinet and State Department officials in the Bush administration. Regardless of the Clinton-Bush-Obama change of label from Democrat to Republican to Democrat, the administration functionaries continue “to be told what we should be doing and how we should think” by the CFR “mothership.”

If ICC jurisdiction over United States citizens is to be averted and American independence and the Bill of Rights preserved, American patriots had better once again rekindle resistance in Congress.