If there has been any constant in the last several millennia, besides change, there’s been the raging appetite of empires to remake the world in their various images. All of them, the Roman, the Ottoman, the British and even the newest, the American empire, have cut through that which existed before they formed, and sought to impose their interest on those unlucky enough to be their subject states. If history teaches us anything, it is that empires are inherently unstable, if only because they inspire enemies rather than allies, and people seek to live free of their influences. They have also sought to become the sole source of law.
In the horrific aftermath of the Second World War, many nations gathered together to try to erect a new set of rules and institutions that would head off another world war, because the last two such wars left the world drenched in blood and sickened by death. They sought to erect a world criminal court that could try armies and leaders that engaged in acts deemed violative of the Law of Nations or International Law, and protected human rights.
If there’s been one implacable foe to that idea, it has been the United States. For over half a century, the US chose to ignore the push for such an institution in Europe and in many parts of the so called developing world. Why, one wonders, would the US, the land of the free and the home of the brave, dare oppose something like this? The Americans feared a non-US tribunal would hold its soldiers under violations of war crimes laws, and for over 50 years, the US opposed it. When former US President Bill Clinton did sign a treaty in support of the International Criminal Court, the ICC, it sought to have veto power over any of its prosecutions. The UN Security Council rejected this notion.
Although signed by Clinton on the 31st of December 2000, the Bush administration, some two years later, announced it would unsign the global pact. In the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “There is a risk that the ICC could attempt to assert jurisdiction over US service members as well as civilians involved in counter-terrorist or other military operations, something we cannot allow.”
When Belgian activists and attorneys filed an action against US General Tommy Franks and other US leaders, Rumsfeld went ballistic, threatening to pull the US money from a planned construction of a new NATO headquarters in Brussels. That US threat may cost it some 115 million or so. Now is the time of Pax Americana, the age of the American empire, and as the Bush administration began its reign, it pushed to abolish virtually every treaty it was a part of.
Yet, who needs immunity from war crimes, but one who intends to commit them? Is the US seeking clemency before its next Mai Lai massacre, its foreign Wounded Knee? We are watching an atrocity in embryo. Massacres are being hatched in the name of democracy, freedom, and human rights. If we don’t act to oppose this obscene growth, this imperial fever, all Americans may come to rue the day it burst forth. From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.