There has been much gnashing of teeth at the death of Slobodan Milosevich. Apparently justice was not served. So what is justice? The man was ignominiously removed from his position of authority, forced to cower in safe houses until the time came when his people sold him out because they valued engagement with the outside world more than his worthless hide. He spent the rest of his days in a prison cell interspersed with trial appointments at a court with questionable legitimacy. He is dead now. If there were any direct positive benefits culminating from his rule, they will almost universally be forgotten and at the very least massively overshadowed. Those that openly claim to admire him will be shunned by wider society. Billions upon billions will learn of him and regard him odiously, even though he died before their birth. History will curse his existence – each and every unchoking breath he took upon this earth.
Hitler was never tried. Does anyone lament this fact? What do people like Hitler or Milosevich gain by not being tried after their downfall?
What do people like Hitler or Milosevich gain by not being tried after their downfall?
It gives some of their “supporters” ammunition for lurid conspiracy theories. It gives them the opportunity to say he was offed and “never had a chance” to prove his innocence. It doesn’t quite draw as complete a line under the issue.
On the otherhand, it avoids the three-ring circus that’s going on in Baghdad right now. They should’ve fed him alive to pigs live on Al-Jazeera.
One can almost hear John Cleese in the background: “Are there any women here today?”
I think most people agree that true justice is a process, not a co-incidence. It may be some material comfort that bad luck befalls a bad person, but it’s not justice – the retribution has to be the deliberate will of the society to count as justice.
However, most of our notions of justice are centered around trials, courts and laws. I don’t have much faith in notions of international courts – they are merely the courts of powerful nations elevated to a rather pompous higher standing for the sake of effect and posturing. The trials of Saddam, Hitler, Slobo etc are show trials. That doesn’t make them bad, but a well documented execution witnessed by the relevant senior figures would seem more honest to me, most of the time.
The trials of these figures are the victory parades of the modern age – they justify and celebrate our successful wars. Understandable, but distasteful.
I always thought that true justice had, of essence, to be timely.
The Nuremburg trials certainly were, but this UN farce was an even worse charade than the infamous ‘show trials’ of the old USSR.
Four years, and counting, it would seem to be as much a punishment for the prosecution as for the defence. I wonder just what purpose was served by such a farce.
Surely, in cases such as this, the guilt of the defendant was not in doubt, so why the delay in reaching a verdict? There can be no other, than to give some false sense of authority to what is no more than a kangaroo court, run by a gang of bullies. Appropriate I suppose, bullies being tried by another set of bullies.
Assuming a verdict was eventually reached, how would the court extract retribution? The death penalty is no longer an option, and incarceration really is seen as a soft option, and would eventually allow the prisoner to state his excuses at some later date.
The trouble is, there is no way that retribution, or punishment, could be levied in a way that bore some meaningful measure for the crimes committed. As they used to say – ‘hanging is too good for him’.
And all this is supposed to be a showcase for “Justice’, our Leaders really must take us for fools!
Ah, I heard some comments about that on television not long after he died. People were a bit upset they weren’t able to hang him.
Still, I think nothing prepared us for the guy who thought of Milosevic as his king. Milosevic never harmed anybody, he said, carrying a huge painting of the guy. He misses his king.
Our reaction can be translated as something like, “Wha-ha-ha-ha-haat?”
So just what is Justice? – vengeance, retribution, punishment or what?
I regret to say I think you are wrong. Billions unborn will not learn of Milosevic. He’s a relatively minor monster, and will be forgotten very soon, like a thousand other tyrants.
Only the most dramatic dictators get remembered. And if they want to be, they have to kill beyond the borders of their own country. How many remember even the self-cartooned horrors of Bokassa and Amin? Who can name the leader of the Rexists? (I can’t.) Pol Pot is for the moment a name… but Lopéz of Paraguay? No longer.
By comparison with these, Milosevic is a grey functionary. By the time the last of his victims’ immediate relatives is dead, outside the Balkans only historians will know his name.
Murderous nationalist regimes are common. Torture loving dictators ditto. They show no sign of going out of fashion. It is only if – like Saddam’s Iraq – they get a star part in the dance of the Great Powers that they are noticed more than temporarily.
How come he wasn’t allowed to go to Moscow for heart treatment 10 days ago? Smells bad.
guy herbert,
But if he’d been fed to pigs live on TV, people would remember! The circumstances of the death are important. They can build a legend, for good or ill, glorious or inglorious.
Does the invocation of the odious name of Hitler at the end of the post constitute a preemptive stike at Godwins Law?
Labrit,
By now, Slobo probably does smell quite bad. It might put the pigs off.
tomWright,
That’s about as transparent as lead. Please elucidate.
Too much legalistic foolishness and foofurah. He should have been summarily executed upon capture, like the Romanian dictator, or Il Duce.
Wouldn’t have been a bad solution for Saddam either if he had gone the way of his demon kids, whether he wanted to “negotiate” or not. Simpler is better.
These trials are nothing but political circuses for the media and the “Oh, look, aren’t we just too too civilized” crowd. Rituals for the impotent.
Apropos Guy’s comment above I would be fascinated to learn if the Dutch have a different view of the Bosnian conflict especially given the colossal screwup by Dutch troops, albeit under UN supervision, which pretty much led directly to the Srebrenica massacre.
Thank goodness he didn’t die in US custody or we would have to listen to YEARS of whining about how this unconvicted prisoner died at the hands of the evil Americans who denied him medical care of his choice.
I have never been brought to trial for a crime, much less “crimes against humanity” (BTW something I find meaningless – all crimes are always crimes against individuals, they are always about the unfair suffering of individuals, no matter how many). If I wanted treatement in Moscow, the NHS would tell me to sling my hook. Screw Slobba on that.
I still think the pigs missed out on a good feed. They coulda been used (in an ideal world) to make the sausages for Abu Hamza’s last meal.
Though, they would’ve been too good sausages for that, especially if my full plan had been implemented – the selective use of truffle-oil to ensure the pigs got the most delicate flesh first.
Europe and the Anglosphere are Civilisation. And we’re gonna have to fight real dirty to remain civilised. Slobba achieved (hats off to him for that) something Western Europe thought it had put behind it in sixty years ago.
Nick M writes:
” Slobba achieved (hats off to him for that) something Western Europe thought it had put behind it in sixty years ago.”
If so, only because it had its eyes closed. Milosovic, in so far as he was a hood, pales into insignificance compared to some about whom we hear far less.
Am I alone in experiencing discomfort at the Left-liberal media’s party line being so perfectly matched by comments from those who, in every other context, regard the MSM as outright liars?
Every time I hear a John Simpson or Gavin Esler telling me how evil Milosovic was, I can’t help remembering how wrong they are elsewhere.
Undoubtedly, Milosovic was a nasty piece of work. So were (and are) many others. In fact, it sounds like hyperbole. Most likely, he was just another nasty little socialist gangster in a region full of them.
“Who can name the leader of the Rexists?”
Leon Degrelle.
Nick M,
we’re gonna have to fight real dirty to remain civilised.
In order to save the village we have to destroy it, eh?
Nick M:
Supporters of people like Milosevich will concoct lurid conspiracy theories, trial or no trial.
I agree with veryretired. An expeditious dispatch is best for people like Milosevich. A trial only provides a soapbox for a torrent of self justification for future revisionists to plunder. Consider Goering at Nuremburg – that should be avoided.
“Undoubtedly, Milosovic was a nasty piece of work. So were (and are) many others. In fact, it sounds like hyperbole.”
Correct.
The hyperbole started when Clinton, the darling of the left and MSM, started bombing him, in a strange and uncharacteristic move. Now, it is considered good form to demonize the targets of your bombing, to bolster your dubious justifications.
guy’s point is probably true about how folk can forget a country’s unpleasant past. I have just returned from a short and very pleasant trip to Porto, Portugal, and I wonder how many young Brits who go there to taste port or eat the food have a clue that as recently as the 1970s, that pleasant nation was ruled by a military junta? Or indeed Spain, Greece, etc.
Somehow, though, I think people won’t forget Saddam in a hurry.
Nevermind “forget”, if it is in the past and it is abroad, most people won’t ever have known it. If was before they were a teenager and at home, most people won’t know about it either – even in those countries with uncontrolled TV and widespread internet.
James’s “billions upon billions” could only ever be hyperbole. If there are a hundred million people alive who know the name Milosevic I would be surprised.
Politicians trade on this public nescience all the time. They know that – even in quite big things – the status quo is all the people know. That’s how they get away with “The rules of the game have changed”, or “Who now remembers the Armenians?”
Guy is right; upon reflection the “billions upon billions” was hyperbolic. Although I think he is being conservative in equal measure if he believes that awareness of Milosevich extends to less than a hundred million.
As someone mentioned above, Milosevich has been painted as an extremely bad egg by many in the West – arguably considerably worse than the awful crimes he committed or that were committed by the people he was responsible for. For this reason, I believe his stamp on history will be more indelible than Guy Herbert suspects.
That was clumsily put. What I meant was it’s arguable that his crimes are disproportionate to his notoriety.
Clarification:
Milosevich got out of power because his plans failed, and not because he dreamed of succeeding.
“Greater Serbia” as an idea is alive and well. Thank goodness there is no longer a UN arms embargo on Croatia, and they’d be able to put the country in check at will.
Guy Herbert,
We seem to be back online. I think your reference to ‘nam is flippant. (Which in itself is not a bad thing – as long as it’s witty). Alas, the wit angel passed that post by.
I mean, get real down and dirty. We are trying to fight Islam globally yet we’re doing it with one hand tied behind our backs. We should use that as our tool. The people who have come out of Guantanamo should’ve been broken down and apostate. Instead we have pandered to their “religion”.
Like this:
http://mysite.verizon.net/jialpert/Politics/Pershing.htm>
Hit them where it hurts, right in the hadiths.
Nick M.
(Is this still playing up?)
Yes, The hyperbole started when Clinton, the darling of the left and MSM, started bombing him, in a strange and uncharacteristic move. Now, it is considered good form to demonize the targets of your bombing, to bolster your dubious justifications.
I never set the bar very high when it comes to justifying ‘helping ‘tyrants from their positions of power. Having seen a chunk of the Balkan Wars first hand, I for one was cheering Clinton when I saw the first pictures of the bombing (I saw it on a TV screen in Mostar and thus often heard the aircraft in question flying overhead). Milosovic needed very embelishment when it came to being demonised as he was rather good at being, well, demonic.