Conservatives love to hate the International Criminal Court. Elaborate scenarios have been conjured up about how it could be politicized and turned into an instrument of anti-American animus. Fears have been raised that Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld could soon find himself in the dock. John Bolton spent an inordinate amount of time and energy when he was Undersecretary of State trying to coerce American allies into signing treaties pledging they would never send Americans for prosecution to the Hague.

So far such alarmism has proven groundless. The ICC seems to be doing exactly what it ought to be doing—trying to hold real war criminals accountable for their actions in places where the local legal system does not function effectively. On Tuesday, the chief ICC prosecutor presented evidence against two suspects in the Darfur genocide—a janjaweed militia leader, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (a.k.a. Ali Kushayb), and a Sudanese government official, Ahmad Harun, who allegedly helped him carry out atrocities. (In a grim irony, Harun is now Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs.)

Of course indicting suspects is one thing; apprehending them and bringing them to the Hague for trial is more difficult. But this is a good first step in bringing to justice the perpetrators of genocide, and makes it harder for the Sudanese authorities to dodge responsibility, which is very much in the interest of the entire civilized world.

In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to send Saddam Hussein for trial in the Hague even though this would have required either convening a special court or an extension of the ICC’s jurisdiction, because his crimes took place before the ICC was formed. This was a missed opportunity. But in the future, American officials, whether Republican or Democrat, should put aside their qualms and make use of the ICC wherever possible to promote the international rule of law, a longstanding American cause.

The problems that now face America in the international legal arena stem from the actions not of the ICC but of national courts, which many conservatives see as a bulwark against the supposed evils of trans-national institutions. Courts in Italy and Germany are now pursuing criminal action against CIA operatives who worked in cooperation with local intelligence agencies to snatch suspected terrorists for “rendition.” Those cases really are a travesty, as David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue eloquently in the Washington Post, but you can’t blame the ICC or the UN.