The Absurdity of International Law

Yesterday's indictment in the International Criminal Court shows how ridiculous international law really is:

The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant yesterday for Sudan's president on charges of waging a campaign of genocide and rape in Darfur, a high-risk strategy that could backfire against the people in the war-torn desert region.

The indictment marked the first time that prosecutors at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal have issued charges against a sitting head of state, though President Omar al-Bashir was unlikely to face trial anytime soon.

Sudan denounced the indictment as a political stunt, saying it would ignore any arrest order and was considering all options, including an unspecified military response. One Sudanese lawmaker said his government could no longer guarantee the safety of U.N. staff in the troubled region.

Fantastic. The inidctment (which really isn't an indictment) is probably going to wind up costing even more loss of life in this savage conflct. And it gets worse.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges against al-Bashir related to a campaign of extermination of three Darfur tribes that the United Nations says claimed 300,000 lives and drove 2.5 million people from their homes. A three-judge panel was expected to take two to three months to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

Do is really take months to figure out that al-Bashir should be indicted? Really? It takes that long?

Unfortunately, the only thing that is going to solve the Darfur Genocide is military action. Something that the U.N. is incapable of doing given the Chinese veto power on the Security Council. But both the dilemma in Darfur with both the UN and the ICC just proves how unreliable international organizations are in dealing with legitimate security and human rights concerns, and how useless it is for the United States to pursue solutions through the ICC and the UN.