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Let's Get Ready To Rumble For International Criminal Court
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Let's Get Ready To Rumble For International Criminal Court
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by Sean Gonsalves
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Biologically speaking, Gerald "Jerry" Clay is not my "real" father. He's my "stepfather."
I hate that word - "stepfather." That's why I put it in quotes. Any man who wants custody of his stepson, even after he and his wife are no longer together, is more than a mere stepfather. That's a man whose paternal love transcends kinship.
Jerry has been my father since we lived in the Acorn Projects in West Oakland. That was a couple years before my brother Chris was born, and we all moved to a working-class neighborhood in East Oakland.
My father (Jerry) was heavy on my mind last week from the moment I boarded the plane at  Boston's Logan International Airport. A smile spread across my face when we touched down at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in D.C. I was imagining Pops saying how Orwellian it is to name a major airport after a guy who crushed the air traffic controllers union, replacing them with scabs. That's like re-naming Morehouse College, the Rev. Martin Luther King's alma mater, George Wallace University.
It was a 15-minute cab ride from the airport to the Hilton in Arlington, Va. I was in town to give a couple of talks at the annual Veterans For Peace national conference. Preparing my notes, my mind's eye kept focusing and re-focusing on a photograph of my father, holding what I think was an M-16. In the background was a Vietnamese hut on fire.
There he was, about 100 yards from the burning hut - a member of a Marine tank division, shirtless, holding a gun; wearing a fearless smirk. To a skinny kid growing up in East Oakland, witness (and infrequent participant) to various acts of violence, this picture was photographic evidence that Pops had Muhammed Ali's courage and Richard Pryor's tragic sense of humor.
During a panel discussion about the "New World Order," I quoted from a 1985 Joint Chiefs of Staff paper in which low-intensity conflict was defined as "a limited politico-military struggle" carried out with "diplomatic, economic, and psycho-social pressures through terrorism and insurgency."
I was surprised when one veteran took me to task for using the word "terrorism" to describe U.S. special operations and intervention in many Third World nations. It wasn't my definition. It belonged to the Reagan administration.
"It's the people in the State Department and the politicians who make the policy, not the soldiers," he said. He was right - about who made the policy.
The following day, I met an interesting fella named John L. Washburn. A former State Department and U.N. official, Washburn is co-chair of the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court (ICC), which, if established, would hold accountable individual policy-makers and commanders who order troops to commit "terrorism" and other violations of international law. The U.S. attack on the Iraqi civilian population and Saddam's attacks on the Kurds, for example.
"The International Criminal Court is a permanent international criminal court," not a temporary tribunal, he said. "The crimes it will try are war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity."
In July 1998, 160 nations signed the Rome Statute, laying out the structure and procedures of the ICC. Already, 14 nations have ratified the statute. It needs 46 more ratifications to bring the court into official existence. But there's one major snag.
"The U.S. is afraid the court will be misused politically to harass American leaders and American service people. The U.S. is proposing to amend the statute to prevent the court from taking custody of an American connected with the government," Washburn said.
"That would cut the guts out of the court because the rogue states with criminal leaders would be able to use this exemption," he said. "The court essentially is based on the Nuremberg principle - that individuals can be tried and punished."
How? An international arrest warrant would be issued. Any country that ratified the statute would be obligated to make the arrest on any ICC suspect within its borders, delivering the suspect to the court.
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and his GOP cronies recently submitted the American Service Members Protection Act, which would forbid any U.S. official from having anything to do with the court.
"Ironically, one of the things it would do is prevent America from assisting any U.S. citizen prosecuted by the court," Washburn said.
I thought about my father and those courageous Veterans For Peace. The ICC is something worth fighting over. Round one: Call your congressional rep. Let's get ready to rumble.
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
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