There is applause around the world for the conviction of Adolfo Sclingo, a former Argentinean naval officer, for throwing 30 opponents of the Galtieri military dictatorship from an airborne plane and other crimes against humanity. The trial, which took place in Spain ended with the convicted former officer being sentenced to 640 years in jail. The trial is an admirable signal that soldiers and politicians in whatever country who abandon civilized behavior, even in conflict, can and will be held accountable and punished for their barbaric crimes.

All around the world in countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, local and international investigators, sometimes at great personal risk, are gathering the evidence necessary to bring torturers and mass murderers to trial. The message from this is that though legal systems may differ in detail, all recognize that the enormity of crimes committed anywhere in the world demands the same robust examination in a court of law where the charges can be put to an accused and all the evidence revealed to the public. Though impressive, what has just happened in Spain is not as satisfactory as a single court with cross-border jurisdiction. Three years ago, just such an entity was set up. The International Criminal Court was established in The Hague. It is a part of the United Nations and, as such, is a place where the international community can prosecute anyone accused of “crimes against humanity” — anyone that is not from the United States, Israel or China who were among seven states that voted against the court.

While Israel feared it might be prosecuted over its illegal settlements and China took the view that the court would interfere in its domestic affairs, George Bush overturned the Clinton administration’s agreement to the ICC because of fears that US soldiers might be subject to “frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions.” The US Congress drove the point home by passing the 2002 American Servicemen’s Protection Act barring US soldiers from being prosecuted outside US courts. Thus US soldiers accused of appalling crimes in Iraq, such as the torture at Abu Ghraib, have been dealt with, and many would argue dealt with leniently, by US military judges. As a result, the ICC which ought one day to become the respected investigating body for crimes of great enormity is currently hobbled, largely by the refusal of Washington — the superpower which boasts of its foundations upon truth and justice — to support and accept its jurisdiction.

Yet there will surely be no one within the Bush administration who will deplore yesterday’s conviction and condign punishment in a foreign court of one of Gen. Galtieri’s vicious henchmen. No one on Capitol Hill is going to call the trial of this mass murderer a “frivolous or politically motivated” prosecution. Yet President Bush appears unable to see that while he insists that there is one law for Americans and another for everyone else, fundamental doubts and suspicions about Washington’s worldview will continue to impede the success of its foreign policy.