ALBANIAN
AMEN CORNER
Imagine
if Milosevic had done the honorable thing, and taken his
own life: in one stroke, he would have eliminated a major
threat to Serbian sovereignty, and handed a big defeat
to the NATO-crats, the evil Carla Del Ponte, and the Albanian
lobby in the US Congress. American supporters of the Kosovo
"Liberation" Army, such as Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont),
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, and Rep. Eliot Engle
(D-NY), among others, were quick to announce that Milosevic's
arrest wasn't enough: $50 million in US aid would not
be released unless Milosevic takes a one-way trip to The
Hague. While the New
York Times
on Thursday reported that the decision had already
been made to disperse the funds, this is no longer so
certain. For the arrest of Milosevic has now brought the
issue of the ICTY's
authority to center stage, and given the enemies of Serbia
another pretext to continue their relentless onslaught.
The sainted Colin Powell, our allegedly "isolationist"
secretary of state, has put off making a decision on the
aid, and is under intense pressure to withhold the funds.
It would be "premature," say pro-Albanian lawmakers, to
assume that Serbia lives up to the high standards of "human
rights" required of US aid recipients – this from
the same people who reward Israeli brutality with hundreds
of millions of your tax dollars. This – from
the same congressional cretins who "certified" Colombia
as having lived up to these vaunted "human rights" standards.
As Murray N. Rothbard used to exclaim, in exasperated
fury at the carnival of human folly: "Are we to be spared
nothing?"
HATING
SERBIA
And
it isn't just New York Democrats with large Albanian constituencies
who form the spearhead of the "Hate Serbia" caucus in
the US Congress: Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is
among the most militant Serbia-haters in Washington: "My
personal view is that aid ought to be cut off until Milosevic
is handed over to the international tribunal,'" McConnell
told Fox News Sunday. "If it's clear they're not
going to do that, then I think the secretary of state
has a pretty tough call." Echoing the protests of Slobo's
Serbian (and American
left fringe) defenders, McConnell bizarrely
claimed that Milosevic cannot get a fair trial in
Yugoslavia: "I don't think they have the infrastructure
there in Yugoslavia to put on a free and fair trial,"
he said. Oh, but the proper "infrastructure" is already
in place at The Hague, where all the accouterments of
a kangaroo
court are in place: secret indictments, secret witnesses,
and the not-so-secret anti-Serb bias of the judges, whose
salaries and perks are paid largely
by Islamic nations such as Pakistan and Indonesia.
KOSTUNICA
VS. DJINDJIC: THE SAINT AGAINST THE SLIME
John
Simpson reported
in the [London] Telegraph that "news that the arrest
would take place was announced by radio and television
stations in Belgrade at 8pm on Friday, six hours before
the riot police moved in. There were rumors that all this
had been skillfully planned by someone senior to humiliate
the government and give Milosevic's supporters the chance
to gather and protect him." As to the identity of "someone
senior," the swirling intrigue of Serbian politics tends
to obscure him from view, but it is unlikely that it was
anyone sympathetic to old Slobo per se. For the
upcoming trial of Milosevic will take place against the
backdrop of the struggle between the heroic President
Kostunica, the patriotic savior of his nation, and the
slimeball Zoran Djindjic, formerly Madeleine Albright's
favored lapdog who spent the war hiding in Montenegro.
MSNBC
had an interesting spin on how the Kostunica-Djindjic
divide split the government in two over the Slobo issue,
setting the federal level against the Serbian state government:
"On
Saturday the tensions between the two erupted into public
view when Djindjic made his move against Milosevic while
Kostunica was at a conference in Geneva. As Serbia's leader,
Djindjic controls the local police, but Kostunica commands
the Army, which at first refused to allow the arrest to
proceed. Milosevic's hard-core supporters actually began
to cheer Kostunica as the police backed off."
TREACHERY
A
tense, three-hour meeting between Kostunica and Djindjic
followed, in which the attempted seizure of Milosevic
– the police had stormed the villa twice, and still
Slobo thumbed his nose at them! – was presented as
a fait accompli. Kostunica, after all, had been
in Geneva, fighting off Serbia's enemies on the international
front. Back home, meanwhile, those same enemies had struck.
It is notable that, as of last Thursday, the $50 million
in US aid was being reported as a sure thing – not
only in the New York Times, but also in the Christian
Science Monitor – with or without Slobo in
the brig. Suddenly, however, that old bogeyman was thrown
into the spotlight, as news media around the world covered
the minute-by-minute drama of Slobo's Last Stand –
but of course, to think this was anything other than the
purest coincidence would amount to a "conspiracy theory,"
and we wouldn't want to be accused of that, now
would we?
A
BABBLING BURBLING BUSH
If
allowed to pass quietly by, without big headlines –
except, of course, right here on Antiwar.com – the
resumption of nearly normal relations with the former
Yugoslavia would have been a foregone conclusion –
or would it? The Bush administration, after all, had pledged
to pull US troops out of the Balkans, and even though
they reneged on their promise shortly after Inauguration
Day, one would have thought that at least the hostility
to Serbia that characterized the Clinton White House would
have passed permanently from the scene. No so. Here is
Bush
burbling on the subject of Milosevic's arrest and
the possibility of Serbia's rehabilitation:
"His
arrest represents an important step in bringing to a close
the tragic era of his brutal dictatorship,'' Bush said
in a statement Sunday. ''We cannot and must not forget
the chilling images of terrified women and children herded
onto trains, emaciated prisoners interned behind barbed
wire and mass graves unearthed by UN investigators. Milosevic's
arrest should be a first step toward trying him for the
crimes against humanity with which he is charged."
THE
TRUTH COMES OUT
What
is truly chilling is that George W. Bush is living up
to his reputation as a dunce – the sort who can parrot
the lessons of his teachers, without understanding or
even caring what he is saying, as long as he can get at
least a grade of C-plus or even a B-minus out of it. Dubya
is totally dependent on his evil advisors for information,
and obviously – even pathetically – doesn't
realize that there were no mass graves unearthed
by UN investigators in Kosovo, in spite of strenuous efforts
to discover them. As
reported in the [London] Times waaay back
in 1999, and since widely discussed, the "mass graves"
alleged to be at the Trepca mines were a complete fabrication,
and all the other claims turned out to be hot air as well.
Stratfor.com, a
private foreign policy research group, estimated that
the total death toll of the Kosovo civil war might very
well be in the hundreds. According to Spanish forensic
surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, the number is closer to 2,500
– not the tens of thousands claimed by NATO and the
Clintonistas a few months earlier – and that includes
both sides. As the Times reported:
"In
an outspoken interview, Pujol complained he had been sent
to head a large investigation team attached to the ICTY,
consisting of pathologists and police specialists, to
work in the north of the country. But he found that what
was publicized as a search for mass graves was 'a semantic
pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did
not find one – not one – mass grave.'"
KOSTUNICA
AND THE RULE OF LAW
Kostunica
loyally defended the treachery of his scheming allies
by pointing to the one principle that seems to define
him as a political figure and a human being: a consistent,
almost
Hayekian devotion to the rule of law. "For the state
to survive no one can be untouchable. Whoever opens fire
on the police must be punished, whoever is summoned before
an investigative judge must respond, whoever breaks the
law must suffer the consequences no matter what their
rank, service or function," Kostunica declared. Although
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is likely to give him
more than his fair share of political trouble, Kostunica
has all along declared that the proper venue to dispense
justice in this case is Belgrade – and nowhere else.
NOT
SO FAST
Remember
how the Yugoslav President bitch-slapped Carla Del Ponte
on her visit to Belgrade, making it clear that he would
never deliver Slobo to her untender mercies? Now
she crows that she has won: "The arrest is a positive
sign on the part of the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities.
It will facilitate his delivery to The Hague and Yugoslavia's
respect of its international obligations," she is quoted
by her spokeswoman as saying. But Agence France Presse
reports that same spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, as "dismissing"
statements by the Yugoslav Interior Ministry that they
would not hand over Milosevic. These were mere
"heated declarations," she said, which the Serbs would
soon come to regret. "If they do not do that within a
reasonable time period we will complain to the United
Nations Security Council and launch all the legal proceedings
in our power to prevent the obstruction."
BETWEEN
SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
This
is the dilemma that Vojisalv Kostunica faces as he steers
his nation between the Scylla
of the NATO-crats, and the Charybdis
of economic and political turmoil at home. Besieged by
Albanians to the South, the specter of an aid cutoff and
even the renewal of economic sanctions if he refuses to
recognize the legitimacy of the UN Tribunal, he must balance
the dangers posed by Serbia's external enemies against
the very real possibility of a Serbian civil war –
which at least two major factions, the Djindjic gang and
the Milosevic Fan Club, are doing their best to provoke.
The former because that would lead to NATO intervention,
which they have every reason to hope will install them
in power, and the latter because they are imbued with
the passionate attachment to martyrdom that is a distinguishing
feature of Serbian nationalism, especially the most violent
and unreasoning strains of it.
TZAR
SLOBO
The
Serbian national myth is based on the exemplar of the
patriotic spirit, Prince
Lazar, who went down to defeat on the famous Field
of Blackbirds, fighting off Muslim invaders. But it
seems that the purity of Serbian heroes, these days, is
not quite up to snuff: whereas the historical Prince ("Tzar")
Lazar gave his life for his country, his would-be emulator,
Tzar Slobo, lacks the heroic profile of the original.
Instead of going down in a blaze of glory, or even committing
ritual suicide in the manner of the Japanese, he meekly
surrendered – and, in sparing his own life, failed
to spare his country from a perilous and uncertain fate.
THE
VIRTUES OF SEPPUKU
But
it isn't too late. Think of the vast sigh of relief that
would go up – and the gasps of disappointment heard
in The Hague – at the news that old Slobo had been
found in his cell, felled by his own hand, alongside a
short note regretting that he had but one life to give
for his country. In this he would follow his parents,
dedicated Communists who both committed suicide when he
was young – but, unlike theirs his own self-immolation
would burn his image in the memory of Serbs at least as
long as Prince Lazar. He would not only reenact but also
redeem their deaths, and cover himself in glory.
MAKING
THE CASE
Now,
I don't know that they'll let Slobo have Internet access
in the Serbian hoosegaw, but I do know that some
of his closest pals check out this site pretty regularly,
and it is to them that I make my appeal: see if you can
talk him into it. Think of the possibilities: not only
will the pressure be taken off Serbia to surrender its
sovereignty in this matter, but you will become
the guardians of the Slobo Myth. You can sell commemorative
coins and pen revisionist histories of his incompetent,
disaster-laden misrule, whitewashing his crimes –
the murder
of political opponents and stealing
large sums of money – and defending his socialist
policies as some kind of lost Golden Age. When you talk
to Slobo, emphasize that he'll go down in Serbian history
as a hero who gave his all, instead of a loser who dragged
his nation down to defeat – and tell him what you're
telling the dwindling ranks of the Slobodan Milosevic
Fan Club: that his arrest is but a prelude to his delivery
to The Hague. In short, build him up, and then scare him
to death, convincing him that there's no real alternative:
you can use Slobo's martyrdom to build your own careers,
while also contributing to the creation of a new national
myth. Think about it.
ECONOMIC
WAR CRIMES
Finally,
I was charmed by the news, in the Erlanger piece, that
Milosevic will face "various charges of financial irregularities,
misusing customs duties, abusing his powers and causing
'damage to the Serbian economy,' including colluding in
hyperinflation in the early 1990's that cost the nation
more than $600 million." Certainly this is going to be
a precedent-setting trial in a fashion any libertarian
such as myself could not fail to approve: here, for the
first time, the ruler of a nation is being put on trial
for the great war crime of inflation – one of the
worst and most deadly weapons in the arsenal of a government
which is constantly at war with the economy and the people.
Inflation, as libertarians know, is the government's most
lucrative racket, ripping off ordinary working people
in order to benefit the bankers and wealthy industrialists
and financiers who reap profits before the inevitable
bust. For this aspect of the upcoming trial alone –
an indictment alleging economic crimes against a socialist
ruler – I not only want to join but to lead the outcry:
Arrest that man!
