Conservatives, alarmed over the erosion of American sovereignty, suffered another setback this week.
The New York Times describes the defeat: "The United States bowed Wednesday to broad opposition on the Security Council and announced it was dropping its effort to gain immunity for its troops from prosecution by the International Criminal Court."
It is a victory for the New World Order, and internationalists see it as such. Both the Financial Times ("U.S. Retreats on Bid for War Crimes Immunity") and The New York Times ("U.S. Drops Plan to Exempt G.I.s from U.N. Court") elevated it to the front-page lead story on June 24.
Several factors brought about the U.S. defeat. NATO allies Spain, Germany and France abandoned us. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an end to immunity for U.S. troops. And the Abu Ghraib prison scandal undermined the case for any exemptions from war crimes trials for America soldiers.
The prospect of U.S. soldiers being led in handcuffs before the ICC to be prosecuted for war crimes, while Washington impotently wails, is, of course, remote. But Americans had better wake up and smell the coffee. A global bureaucracy is steadily tying this nation down with tiny strands, just as Gulliver was tied down by the little men on that beach in Lilliput.
Globalists are elated and cocky over our defeat. Reports the FT: "International human-rights groups welcomed the Security Council's refusal to extend the immunity resolution.
"'The rule of law has been reinforced: that international law applies equally to all countries,' said William Pace, head of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court."
What is wrong with Pace's contention? Just this. The United States opposed creation of the ICC. And the president and Congress have rejected its claims to jurisdiction over U.S. armed forces. By what right, then, does the ICC claim such jurisdiction?
Can a tribunal be set up and assert a right to prosecute U.S. citizens and soldiers without our permission? In the World Government rising, apparently our consent is not required for us to be subject to a criminal tribunal whose sovereignty supercedes our own. Americans had best discover what these internationalists are up to, or our grandchildren may one day wake up and find out Granddad was napping while they lost forever what their ancestors had won for them on the battlefields of Saratoga and Yorktown.
Consider the claims being made and accepted by nations, by international organizations and by civil servants no one ever elected.
The U.N., a U.S. creation, is now claiming the right to determine when, where and whether the United States may go to war. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a U.N. bureaucrat from a failed state, Ghana, is telling us that U.S. soldiers must be subject to prosecution by a U.N. war- crimes tribunal with jurisdiction we have never accepted.
The World Trade organization, established in 1994 when Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich signed onto Bill Clinton's GATT treaty, ordered President Bush to lift U.S. steel tariffs or face fines, and President Bush meekly complied. Now, the WTO has ordered Congress to end tax breaks for major U.S. exporters and authorized the EU to impose tariffs on U.S. goods – which the EU has done. Now, Congress is rushing to comply.
Has no one considered imposing reciprocal tariffs on the EU and telling it the ball is in its court? Europe, after all, runs a huge trade surplus with us. They are the ones who should fear a trade war.
The question here is not only what is decided, but who decides. Why should laws enacted by Congress and signed by the president be subject to any review, other than by our own Supreme Court?
This year, another U.N. power grab, over the world's oceans and their resources, almost succeeded, until conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Frank Gaffney raised the roof. U.S. accession to the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty was then interred in Senate committee. The Law of the Sea Treaty was a resurrected version of the one Ronald Reagan had torpedoed in 1983. They keep coming back.
Americans seem unaware that all these institutions with the high-sounding names – the United Nations, World Trade Organization, the Kyoto Protocols, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank – have one grand strategic purpose:
To assert the superior sovereignty of international organizations over the government of the United States, to restrict and conscript our power for their purposes and to transfer the wealth of the American nation and people to international civil servants – for their consumption and redistribution.
In the name of humanity, these glorified thieves would rob us of our heritage. We are fools if we let it happen.
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.