Milosevic Demands Clinton, Schroeder and Blair Testify at His Trial

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He has demanded that former President Clinton, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Prime Minister Tony Blair testify. The UN court in the Hague is now trapped -- either it permits these witnesses (indeed compels them) thereby creating a farce, or it refuses, denying Mr. Milosevic a "fair trial." A bullet in the back of the head would be more appropriate.

The Former Yugoslav President presided over a genocide. There really isn't much dispute about this. Thousands were killed in Europe's worst mass murder since Herr Hitler killed himself. Whether he ordered the murders or merely permitted them to happen is irrelevant. It was his job to protect these murder victims, and he did not. They are dead because he didn't do his job, and that means he is guilty by omission if not commission.

The idea of a fair trial is a noble one, but this is a show trial. It is impossible to imagine Mr. Milosevic being found not guilty. Since his guilt is a foregone conclusion, and because mitigating factors for a head of state are almost non-existent, this trial serves no legal purpose. It is a political event, and it denigrates the memory of those who were murdered as a matter of policy -- as if there could be mitigation for genocide, or as if the head of state could be the wrong man.

The idea of a show trial was born under Comrade Stalin, for whom the assassination of enemies was insufficient -- his psychosis demanded their public "contrition" and humiliation as well. At the end of the Second World War, it was Uncle Joe who insisted on trying the Nazi leadership; Churchill believed in summary field executions. While the Nuremburg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials did dispense some justice, they achieved nothing that Sir Winston's proposal could not.

And so it will be in Baghdad, when Saddam Hussein gets his many days in court. The man is guilty of launching two wars of aggression, he has used chemical weapons on civilian populations, and he ran a police state for a generation. He is guilty, too. There is no mitigation. There is no reason to dress the vengeance of the Iraqi interim government as a legal proceeding any more than there is for the people of Europe to pretend the political trial in the Hague is a matter of law.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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