ShareThisAn editorial / By Dale McFeatters
Friday, November 17, 2006
In the abstract, the International Criminal Court to try war crimes makes a certain sense, but the United States has refused to join and the latest attempt to prosecute top U.S. officials in German courts goes a long way toward explaining why the concept is so unpopular with the American public.
A group of German and U.S. civil-rights lawyers this week asked German prosecutors to open a war-crimes investigation into outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet, former U.S. Iraq commander Ricardo Sanchez and eight other U.S. officials for good measure.
In other words, it would basically be an indictment of the U.S. government. Would that these same activists showed similar enthusiasm for pursuing the world's dictators for their depredations, but the United States is too big and too easy a target, and unlike, say Iran, we're not likely to send assassins after them.
The officials are alleged to have ordered or condoned war crimes at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, arguably two of this nation's more woeful moments. The failings of these two institutions have hardly been ignored by the American press, courts and Congress.
Disagree with the Abu Ghraib investigation _ and many feel it shielded higher-ups _ but U.S. soldiers were charged, tried and convicted in open court of crimes in connection with prisoner abuse. The commander of the prison was removed from her post and later demoted.
As for the Bush administration's ill-conceived prison at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military and civilian lawyers have fought nonstop to get prisoners there before the U.S. court system or, failing that, military tribunals with a full set of safeguards. And with Democrats taking control of Congress, the story of Guantanamo Bay is far from over.
This attempted prosecution seems less to do with war crimes than opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and a visceral dislike of the Bush administration. And if German courts decline to prosecute Rumsfeld et al.? Said lawyer Wolfgang Kalek: "If we fail here, we will try in France, or in Spain. We want to show that there will be no safe haven anywhere in the world for him."
And they wonder why Americans feel that an international criminal court would be a forum for vendettas against the United States.
