The best news I’ve heard in a long time: “The Bush administration has decided to renounce formally any involvement in a treaty setting up an international criminal court, and is expected to declare that the signing of the document by the Clinton administration is no longer valid, government officials said today.”

The ‘unsigning’ of the treaty, which is expected to be announced on Monday, will be a decisive rejection by the Bush White House of the concept of a permanent tribunal designed to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes.

You know what? Not even such pathetic and ham-fisted spin by Neil Lewis, reporting for The New York Times (implied subtext: The Bush administration is in favor of genocide and seeks to prevent the prosecution of war criminals), can minimize the perfect rectitude of this decision — nor the boldness evidenced by the Bushies in ruling so decisively on this issue.

The administration has long argued that the court has the potential to create havoc for the United States, exposing American soldiers and officials overseas to capricious and mischievous prosecutions.

‘We think it was a mistake to have signed it,’ an administration official said. ‘We have said we will not submit it to the Senate for ratification.’ The renunciation, officials said, also means the United States will not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and will not submit to any of its orders.

In addition, other officials said, the United States will simultaneously assert that it will not be bound by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a 1969 pact that outlines the obligations of nations to obey other international treaties.

Article 18 of the Vienna Convention requires signatory nations like the United States to refrain from taking steps to undermine treaties they sign, even if they do not ratify them. As with the treaty for the International Criminal Court, the United States signed but did not ratify the Vienna agreement.

[…] The pointed repudiation of the International Criminal Court, while not unexpected, is certain to add to the friction between the United States and much of the world, notably Europe, where policy makers have grumbled ever more loudly about the Bush administration’s inclination to steer away from multinational obligations.

Despite the strong stance by the United States, the International Criminal Court will begin operations next year in The Hague. More than the required number of 60 nations had signed the treaty as of last month, and the court’s jurisdiction will cover crimes committed after July 1 of this year.

Could this be the first major step toward the U.S. either withdrawing from — or at least calling for serious reforms to — the United Nations?

I certainly hope so. The inmates are running the asylum, and it’s about time the U.S. made clear that it notices such things.

Palitha Kohona, the chief of the treaty section for the United Nations, said it was unheard of for a nation that signed a treaty to withdraw that signature. David J. Scheffer, who was ambassador at large for war crimes and who signed the treaty for the Clinton administration, said that withdrawing the signature exceeded even the actions of the Reagan administration, which in 1987 decided it would not seek ratification of an amendment to the Geneva Conventions that the Carter administration had signed. The action concerned a document known as Protocol 1, which would have extended protections to soldiers of insurgent movements.

‘There has never been an attempt to literally remove the document,’ he said.

Mr. Scheffer said the Bush administration’s actions would not only undermine international justice but also damage American interests.

‘The perception will be that the United States walked away from international justice and forfeited its leadership role,’ he said. ‘It will be a dramatic moment in international legal history.’

Probably so, Mr. Scheffer — just not in the way you think. Hopefully the “perception” will be something more along the lines of, “you mean, the United States won’t forfeit a portion of its sovereignty to a bunch of political grandstanders with a propensity toward choosing political expediency over justice — and then dressing that expediency up as justice? Huh. Maybe we’d better rethink our strategy, then…”

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