The Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government. The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.
In the second Trump administration, these calls have continued to grow. Last year, major activist groups urged high-ranking international officials “to take immediate and meaningful action” against the Trump administration’s deportations of violent criminals to El Salvador. Months later, a former ICC chief prosecutor declared that President Trump’s strikes against narcoterrorists amounted to “a crime against humanity” and should be treated as such under international law—a line that was echoed by United Nations leaders, and major leftist nongovernmental organizations, Democratic Party officials and politicians. In March, the Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now urged the Iranian regime to request an ICC investigation of “apparent war crimes” committed by American personnel.
U.S. efforts to push back against the ICC’s illegitimate interventions have been framed as a further reason for the ICC to target Americans. When 12 U.S. senators wrote to the ICC prosecutor about their concerns, the prosecutor’s office accused them of crimes. When Mr. Trump imposed sanctions against ICC personnel, a former head of Human Rights Watch said that “all 125 ICC member states would have a legal duty to arrest him were he to show up.”
It is only a matter of time before the ICC begins making good on these threats. Border Patrol agents working to remove violent criminals from our country, U.S. Marines risking their lives to restore order in the Western Hemisphere, federal prosecutors working to dismantle terror networks plotting attacks on the American homeland—all would face the constant risk of persecution for the “crime” of defending our country.
The ICC’s interfering with American military and law enforcement operations isn’t just only a grave overreach of its purported authorities. It would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation. Our decision and our people would be at the mercy of the ICC and its collaborators in the “international community.” To accept the ICC is to surrender control of our national destiny.
Perhaps more polite and compliant nations could make their peace with that arrangement. But this is America. Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of “international law.”
The Trump administration will always protect American service members from this threat. The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message—sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.” ~ U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio