Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

“Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of ‘international law.'”—Marco Rubio

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is going down. At least, it is if Secretary of State Marco Rubio has anything to do with it.

“Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents, and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America,” Rubio wrote in an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do.”

If you’re unfamiliar, the ICC, which is located in The Hague, Netherlands, was established in 2002 under the Rome Statute to handle the absolute worst crimes in the world, like genocide. It claims it can investigate people of any nation if it feels their own government won’t, and the United States has never bought into this ridiculous idea that is simply a globalist slippery slope.

“Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens,” Rubio writes. “President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his ‘concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.’ Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president ‘to use all means necessary’—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans.”

I was vehemently opposed to it myself back then, which opposition led me to compose one of my most popular CF parodies ever: ICC and the Dark Lord, ostensibly a Grauniad report on Frodo Baggins being tried at the ICC for wantonly destroying the One Ring.

Frodo Baggins of Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle Earth, has been called before the International Criminal Court to answer charges of war crimes brought by Sauron the Dark Lord and Saruman the White in a joint filing.

Baggins refused comment on the matter from his home at Bag End, simply moaning and holding his head. But his former valet and gardener (now mayor of Hobbiton) Samwise Gamgee spoke with reporters from his “bit of garden,” saying that “you people ought to know better, coming here bothering my master and trampling my taters and all. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard of since Master Merry and Master Pippin started up that Broadway show of theirs. That didn’t work out so well, either, but all’s well as ends better, as my Gaffer used to say.” Gamgee was referring to the spectacular failure of “Mount Doom – the Musical,” which debuted on Broadway last year and closed the same night, bankrupting its producers and principal investors Meriadoc Brandybuck of Buckland and Peregrine Took of the Tookland, both in the Shire.

The charges brought by Sauron and Saruman are serious and were commented on at length by the Dark Lord himself at a press conference held after he delivered the formal papers to the Court. As a full signatory to the Court’s original charter, Sauron is legally entitled to bring charges before the Court, and the Court’s decision will be binding on Mr. Baggins, per the charter establishing the authority of the Court over the entire world, whether the particular defendant lives in a member country or not. The Shire has repeatedly refused to ratify a proposal to join the Court; the proposal has languished in the legislature, bogged down by stalling tactics employed by right-wing and unilateralist legislators intent on blocking it. Gondor and Rohan have likewise not joined the ICC, for similar obstructionist reasons.

Heh. I slay me.