Arab News Editorial

It was always wrong that Washington wanted its soldiers serving abroad exempt from prosecution for war crimes. It is therefore an important and welcome step that in the face of virtually united opposition from UN Security Council members, the Americans have withdrawn a resolution that would have extended this unique protection for a third year. They now rightly accept they will be treated like everyone else.

It was of course the debacle at Abu Ghraib that so undermined Washington’s original argument that its troops would be open to malicious and political prosecution. They may indeed now be as open to political prosecutions as the soldiers of any other state, but America is now accepting its men’s accountability for very real crimes.

The White House also clearly appreciated that now was not the moment to pick another row with the Security Council. Six months ago political hawks like Donald Rumsfeld might have persuaded the president to once more face down an angry UN. No more. Bush needs the UN to take a lead role in Iraq and he needs positive results from the invasion and occupation to show the November electorate back home. Besides this climb-down is largely symbolic. The International Criminal Court is designed to be a chamber of last resort. Cases will only come to it if they have not been satisfactorily prosecuted in the home country of the accused.

President Clinton signed the Rome Treaty that established the court, but US legislators have never ratified it. Nor indeed has Russia, and China has not signed at all. So far only 94 countries have ratified their signatures and 45 have signed but not yet taken the final step. Only one Arab country, Jordan, has so far signed, which means that US soldiers could not be brought before the ICC for any offences committed in Iraq.

Given the still undeveloped powers of the ICC and the fact that it can only deal with case from countries that have first accepted its jurisdiction, it may seem extraordinary that the White House has until now been so insistent that it needed exemption. What this position demonstrates is the wider US view of the world. It sees itself as the only global policeman and has overweening confidence in the rightness of its mission. In such circumstances, the country which back home makes such a big issue of equality before the law is internationally perfectly content to argue that it can be more equal than anyone else.

At the height of its enthusiasm for the war on terror, the Bush administration seemed prepared to kick in any door, stop and search anyone and anything and compromise any foreign relationship to pursue its aim of destroying Bin Laden and his deluded followers. It has learned the hard way that it is knowledge and, more importantly, understanding of the world it wishes to patrol that counts far more than muscle-bound, gung-ho aggression. For an administration that has been predisposed to believe its hard-line policies were unquestionably correct, this has been a tough class.