Threading the Needle at the ICC

Prosecutors at International Criminal Court in The Hague are requesting arrest warrants for Muammar Qaddafi and two of his relatives, the NYTimes reports. The men are said to have “crushed peaceful demonstrations and ordered the use of live ammunition and heavy weapons against protestors.”

In another act of shameless self-promotion, here is an expanded version of the comments (which have not been “highlighted” — yet) I left at the Times:

If the warrant is based on the accusation that Qadaffi “crushed peaceful demonstrations and ordered the use of live ammunition and heavy weapons against protestors,” then why has not a similar warrant been issued for Bashar al-Assad of Syria? Assad has responded similarly to protests in his own country. I expect the U.S. to base its rhetoric on political considerations, but while it may be in America’s best interest to have a stable (albeit autocratic) Syrian regime, the ICC can hardly justify such hypocrisy. The court in the Hague should be above such realpolitik considerations, but in singling out Qadaffi without also citing the leaders of Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, it shows that politics has infested every level of international justice.

Is it hypocritical to accuse the ICC of hypocrisy while not leveling the same charges at the United States? Maybe. But the U.S. government has its own interests to look out for; the ICC is a supposedly neutral arbiter of justice. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court is also meant to be neutral, but Scalia and his fellow strict-constructionists (gee, let’s pretend we know what Thomas Jefferson would think of gay marriage) are about as neutral as the billionaire Koch brothers in the Citizens United case.