Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Omar Bashir, President of Sudan, for his role in genocide and other war crimes in Darfur. An editorial in the New York Times written shortly after the warrant was issued concluded with this paragraph:

And he [Mr. Obama] should urge all of America’s allies to comply with the arrest order if Mr. Bashir decides to leave Sudan — there is talk that he may try to attend an Arab summit in Qatar later this month. Any country that continues to enable Mr. Bashir should be branded as an accomplice to his many horrors.

There are now reports that Bashir is traveling freely. He visited Eritrea on Monday and is in Egypt today (Wednesday).

So much for the US and Obama following the advice of the Times’ editorial staff and urging our allies to honor the arrest warrant.

It would be truly ironic if Obama did urge Egypt to arrest Bashir, since both the US and Obama are openly defying the ICC themselves. As described in the New York Times in May, 2002, the Bush Administration repudiated President Clinton’s last minute signing of the treaty establishing the ICC:

In a letter to Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, the Bush administration said that the signature of the Clinton administration on the treaty creating the court was no longer legally binding.

"The United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty," John R. Bolton, an undersecretary of state, wrote to Mr. Annan in a one-paragraph letter. "Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations from its signature on Dec. 31, 2000."

Finally, Jonathan Turley pointed out on Rachel Maddow’s show this week that Obama is now risking becoming an accomplice to torture because he is refusing to prosecute those who ordered and carried out torture despite irrefutable evidence that the US committed this war crime:

By refusing to prosecute those who ordered and carried out torture, Obama is ignoring the requirements of US law and international law. With his lack of action against Bush and Bashir, Obama is joining them in defying the ICC. That is not very good company for our president to be keeping, in my opinion. As the Times feared, Obama now has become an accomplice to Bashir’s crimes, just as Turley points out he is an accomplice to Bush’s crimes.