What Would We Do Without the International Criminal Court

The Greek Bar Association is going to bring British Prime Minister Tony Blair up on war crimes charges before the ICC, since Britain is a signatory to the respective treaty governing it. President Bush cannot be tried as the US refused to sign, according to this commentary from Paul Craig Roberts.

Interestingly, Britain's arrest of Chilean Augusto Pinochet created the precedence for this, although Britain (or Spain where he was tried) had no legal jurisdiction. The article carries this interesting summary of the Pinochet's rule.

Gen. Pinochet was a victim of Soviet propaganda. He was head of the Chilean army in 1973 when it was forced by popular demand and appeal from the elected legislature to overthrow Salvador Allende, who was turning Chile into a Soviet client state.

Gen. Pinochet had to combat Marxist terrorists during the 1970s and 1980s, using the equivalent of the U.S. Patriot Act and military detention a la the U.S. camp at Guantanamo Bay. With far fewer resources, Gen. Pinochet successfully put down a far greater terrorist threat than the one currently faced by the U.S.

During these years, Gen. Pinochet revived Chile's broken economy and restored the country's legal and political systems. He succeeded, because he turned the government over to civilian ministers with graduate educations from the University of Chicago and Harvard. He authorized a group of leading citizens to create a new constitution that would restore democracy and representative government and used referenda to legitimize the new political system. Gen. Pinochet kept to the time schedule he had established and stepped down as president of Chile in 1990, just as he said he would.

Blair could be arrested, tried, and punished for Britain's role in the Battle for Iraq.

...if the ICC issues a warrant, Mr. Blair won't be able to go to Greece or to any country that might hand him over to the ICC.

Indeed, once Mr. Blair achieves his goal of dissolving Great Britain into the European Union, there will be no sovereign British government to protect him. He could be picked up at will by EU police and handed over to the ICC.

And liberals wonder why conservatives are so distrustful of major international bureaucracies?