Exemption

It’s a very good look for US officials to be trying to plough under the International Criminal Court. It’s a bit like a bank robber slashing the tires of all the local police cars.

The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal over investigations into the United States and its allies, including Israel.

Oh, they want to investigate us? Well we can’t allow that; get rid of them.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday, after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge at the ICC and other international courts. Trump has coveted that prize for himself.

Trump has also started a war of choice. He can covet a blow job from God Himself if he wants to, but he’s not going to get one, and he’s also not going to get any peace prize from anyone but his own stooges.

“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

Then nobody is. If we’re not, why is anyone else? Do explain; we’re all agog.

The sanctions cut the court off from U.S.-based financial services, technology companies and even using U.S. dollars. They set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies and individuals that have business with the court to wind that business down.

The ICC denounced the step as an attack on the rule of law and the foundations of international order, themes that Rubio had appeared to embrace only two days ago in a speech in front of the Acropolis in Athens.

“It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the court from doing what it was created to do,” the court said in a statement. “It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.”

Ah but you see that simple principle would mean that Donald Trump does not stand above the law, and they can’t be doing with that.

ICC President Tomoko Akane, a citizen of U.S. ally Japan, said the court would “continue to fully discharge its mandate, with independence and impartiality, acting only on the basis of the law and the evidence, for the sake of the countless victims of grave crimes.”

She also appealed to other ICC members for support. “This is not just about defending a single institution, but about safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law.”

Trump doesn’t want an international order grounded upon the rule of law unless it issues him an absolute exemption before it does anything else.

In a joint statement, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom expressed strong disagreement with the U.S. sanctions.

Um…er…well we don’t see the Soviet Union or China or Afghanistan there, so who cares? Right?