From the road, let me quickly call your attention to Andy McCarthy’s excellent essay on Harold Koh in the current issue of National Review. An excerpt:
“On the day after the [9/11] attack,” Koh wrote in 2003, “George Bush could have flown to New York to stand in solidarity with the world’s ambassadors in front of the United Nations.” In reality, the U.N. building and its habitués were not available for a photo-op at the time, owing to the inferno a bit farther downtown. But reality is not Koh’s usual stomping ground.
He prefers the transnational-progressive vision of a post-sovereign order in which terror networks and rogue states are to be controlled by the luminous power of the law. Not American law, or even international law, but global law, first conceived by progressive academics (for instance, Harold Koh), then applied, and supposedly enforced, by supra-national tribunals. Faced with a terrorist atrocity, Koh argues, President Bush should have forgone all that national-defense mobilization and “supported the International Criminal Court as a way of bringing the Osama bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of the world to justice.”
And Andy’s bottom line: “Global governance is not American governance — and the difference will make the world a very dangerous place for Americans.”