Could President Bashir’s International Criminal Court case be applied to President Bush?

President Bush's reaction if he were to get charged. "Aww crap what now?"

An interesting article over on Al Jazeera by an American, Middle East history professor poses the question of applying the charges against Sudanese President Bashir to President Bush. This has always been a small question since the United States unsigned the ICC Statute of Rome. The Bush administration basically unsigned the statute to protect its service members and other foreign nationals from any ICC prosecution in the case of a potential ‘problem’ (aka conduct that would be called a human rights violation or war crimes). And, since the US is not a signatory of the statute they are not under the jurisdiction of the ICC because it is a court independent of the UN and you must opt-in to its jurisdiction. Sudan is not a signatory, so why does it have multiple cases against members of the ruling party? The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1593 in 2005 referring the case to the ICC and giving it jurisdiction over the matter.

So even though the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over the United States or any of its actions, you still have to think ‘what if?’ Click on to read more.

In Prosecutor Ocampo’s report to the ICC the following line is written:

“Bashir was directly responsible [for the activities of the militias]. He is the president. He is the commander-in-chief. Those are not just formal words. He used the whole state apparatus. He used the army; he enrolled the militia/Janjaweed. They all report to him. They all obey him. His control is absolute.”

If you think about it, President Bush is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the US. In a way he is responsible for the action of our forces. Technically every military service person reports to the President and only him. A service member’s superiors are just doing the bidding of their superiors and that all leads to President Bush. I mean Bush went directly against the UN when the Security Council denied the US request to invade Iraq. A direct violation of the international communities opinion that should be respected no matter what the situation is. Add in the US torturing of prisoners and numerous human rights abuses this doesn’t look good for Bush or the US.

But will anything happen? In my opinion I really don’t think so. Bush is on his way out and the amount of effort that it would take to even get the ICC to be able to look at the situation while the US is still not a signatory would be immense. Bush will get off easy while the Bashir case will set the precedent for charging heads of state for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. the Bashir case has been a long time coming and thankfully is finally coming to fruition. Will President Bashir be arrested anytime soon of the ICC Judges approve the arrest warrant? No, he may never be arrested in my opinion. But his travel will be severely limited since he could be arrested if he travels to a country that is a member of the ICC and nations will be less likely to deal with a nation that has a standing head of state with a warrant. With Bashir’s travel and diplomatic options further limited his country and party will become desperate and hopefully something miraculous will occur to get him out of his ruthless authoritarian position.