Herman
The
politicization of the system of global justice has reached new heights over the
past decade, with the U.S. Godfather asserting his firmer hegemonic position
with an arrogance that is a throwback to Secretary of State Richard Olney’s
statement back in 1895 that "the United States is practically sovereign on this
continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its
interposition." Today, by U.S. fiat, a U.S. target anywhere on the earth is
almost automatically put under the siege of sanctions, bombing and/or invasion,
and possible incarceration of the demonized leader (Manuel Noriega and Panama,
Saddam Hussein and Iraq, Slobodan Milosevic and Yugoslavia). On the other hand,
a U.S. ally can commit really massive human rights violations and war crimes and
be entirely free from penalty, receive economic and military aid and diplomatic
support and be treated as an honored leader (Suharto, until May 1998, Croatia’s
Franjo Tudjman till his death in 1999, Ariel Sharon today), and can retire in
comfort (Haiti’s Cedras, El Salvador’s Guillermo Garcia, Indonesia’s Suharto).
The
new system reached its post-Orwellian peak of politicized "justice" on May 24,
1999, when the prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), Louise Arbour, announced the indictment of Yugoslav president
Milosevic and four associates, for their role in the Racak massacre of January
1999 and the expulsions of thousands of Kosovo Albanians and killing of some 350
of them following the beginning of NATO’s bombing on March 24, 1999. The
indictment was cobbled together hastily, Arbour mentioning that the
investigation was still in process, and expressing her gratitude to the NATO
powers for their generous provision of information on Serb war crimes. The
indictment was timed perfectly to offset the growing criticism of the NATO
bombing, which was increasingly attacking the civilian infrastructure of
Yugoslavia in order to hasten that country’s surrender. As this NATO policy was
in clear violation of the Nuremberg principle barring targets not dictated by
"military necessity," the Arbour-ICTY action offered the amazing spectacle of a
war crimes tribunal literally servicing the commission of war crimes.
The
NATO powers had arranged a cease-fire in Kosovo with Yugoslavia in October 1998,
but NATO not only failed to limit the activities of the KLA in the ensuing
period, it is now known that the United States had been busily training and
arming the KLA and in effect underwriting KLA provocations that would induce the
Serbs to attack the KLA and its supporters (Peter Beaumont et al.,"CIA’s Bastard
Army Ran Riot in Balkans’ Back Extremists," Observer [London], March 11, 2001).
The German Foreign Office described the Serb actions in Kosovo prior to the NATO
bombing as not a case of "ethnic cleansing" but rather brutal policies targeting
the KLA and its support base. The numbers killed on all sides in the year before
the NATO bombing were in the order of 2,000, and would have been fewer if the
NATO powers had put in place their allowable quota of international observers
and had not supported the KLA’s provocative actions. The one pre-bombing
incident mentioned in the indictment, the Racak massacre, has been called into
serious question; and at present the most credible among the competing claims is
that the "massacre" was a KLA-staged event organized following a fire fight, and
quickly accepted as authentic by William Walker, the U.S.-head of the OSCE, and
his NATO allies. (Up to this day, the OSCE has refused to release the forensic
report on Racak which it hastened to arrange in January 1999). The other events
listed in the indictment followed the NATO bombing and were a consequence of the
war, hence of the NATO decision to resort to war.
It is
also clear that the numbers killed and expelled in Kosovo before March 24, 1999
were not in the same league with the numbers victimized in Turkey’s
counterinsurgency war against the Kurds in the 1990s (over 30,000 killed,
several million made refugees) or the East Timorese victimized by Indonesia in
1999 (probably over 6,000 killed, several hundred thousand made refugees). But
Turkey and Indonesia have been U.S. allies and clients, so not only were no
tribunals called for or put in place, Turkey was even mobilized as a participant
in the war against "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, and both Turkey and Indonesia
have continued to receive economic and military aid from the Great Power(s).
Ariel Sharon, under whose authority over a hundred civilians were slaughtered at
El-Bureig and Qibya in 1953, many thousands were killed in the invasion of
Lebanon in 1982, with between 700 and 3,000–mainly women and
children–butchered at Sabra-Shatila in that year, is the Israeli head of state
today, treated as an honored statesman. (The civilian casualties at Qibya, El-Bureig
and Sabra-Shatila alone, are conservatively estimated at more than ten times the
lifetime killings of the feared terrorist Carlos the Jackal, now housed in a
French prison).
It
goes without saying that the Godfather’s own war crimes and support of
genocidists are exempt from punishment, and in recognition of global "realities"
they are rarely even mentioned. He may be responsible for a million Iraqi deaths
from "sanctions of mass destruction," but he will not be troubled by any threats
or even audible accusations from the New Humanitarian keepers of the global
conscience like Vaclav Havel, Bernard Kouchner, Susan Sontag, David Rieff, or
Michael Ignatieff. In the Yugoslavia case, he is safe from any charges for
bombing hundreds of civilian targets, or for his failure to prevent a massive
REAL ethnic cleansing in Kosovo under NATO authority after June 10, 1999, by his
de facto control of the ICTY agenda. Not only is his collaboration with the
Croatian army in the killing of hundreds of Krajina Serbs and expelling 200,000
of them beyond prosecution, his refusal to supply information on the Croatian
army’s actions precluded any ICTY prosecution of these U.S.-supported killers
(Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops ‘Cleansed’ the Serbs," NYT,
March 21, 1999). The Tribunal did, however, bring two indictments for misconduct
in Krajina, but both of them, Radoslav Brdjanin and Momir Talic, were Serbs,
indicted back in 1991.
In
the case of Indonesia and East Timor, there has been no pressure from the Great
Power(s) or "international community" to establish a tribunal to bring General
Wiranto to book for his crimes in East Timor in 1998 and 1999 that were more
serious than those spelled out in the May 24, 1999 indictment of Milosevic, or
to deal with the triple genocidist General Suharto. This was to be left to the
Indonesian authorities, partly on the ground that external intervention might
"destabilize" Indonesia! The Godfather and his loyal cronies knew that this was
tantamount to granting impunity to the Indonesian war criminals, but these were
OUR war criminals and impunity was the aim. By contrast, Milosevic is to be
brought to book at all costs, and there is no concern that blackmailing the
Yugoslav government into turning him over to the ICTY might destabilize
Yugoslavia. Having virtually destroyed the country, why would there be any worry
over political destabilization?
The
Great Power(s) use of money and bullying tactics to manipulate the affairs of
small states is hardly new. The United States intervened in the Nicaraguan
elections of 1984 and 1990 with financial and technical aid to the side it
favored, and in 1990 it also used a blackmail threat, warning that only a
Sandinista defeat would end sanctions and proxy warfare via the contras.
Similarly, the United States intervened with financial aid in the Yugoslav
election that ousted Milosevic, and in a rather crude process it and its allies
have made economic aid contingent on turning Milosevic over to the Hague
Tribunal. The sums that Yugoslavia will get will be tiny in relation to the
damage the NATO bombings and sanctions caused that country, the action violates
the Yugoslav constitution and due process ("cannot be considered legal or
constitutional," as President Kostunica himself stated on June 24 [he allegedly
favored a trial within Yugoslavia, but was overridden]), and it represents a
humiliating and unwarranted admission of national guilt, but the politicians
funded by NATO were determined to please the Great Power(s) at any legal and
moral cost.
And
the illegal methods employed in bringing Milosevic to The Hague fit well the new
system of global justice, with Sharon treated as a respectable leader and
Suharto exempt from prosecution for war crimes, and only the Godfather’s targets
subject to New World Order "law." There is a small debate on the left as to
whether we are dealing here with a "double standard" or single standard.
Actually, it is both: it is a double standard in the sense that the
theoretically applicable principles are applied differently to friends and
enemies, with enemies held to a standard that the Godfather himself as well as
his allies could never meet and never have to meet. It is a single standard in
that the Godfather is very consistent in dealing with his friends one way–
granting them immunity for crimes–while treating targets with unrelenting
hostility.
Beyond the selectivity in target, it should be recognized that the ICTY is a
kangaroo court that has not performed much more judicially than the Stalinist
courts of the 1930s. Its hyper- politicization was dramatically displayed in the
rush indictment of Milosevic to meet the pressing public relations need of NATO
in May 1999, as well as in its followup blanket exemption of NATO’s numerous war
crimes. But there have also been numerous detailed demonstrations that in its
day-to-day legal work the ICTY has violated virtually every accepted Western
standard of good judicial practice–among other things, accepting hearsay
evidence and the testimony of anonymous witnesses; permitting double jeopardy;
dispensing with juries; and rejecting the notion of innocence till proven guilty
(for summaries and details, Christopher Black and Edward Herman, "An Unindicted
War Criminal: Louise Arbour and the International Crimes Tribunal," Z, Feb.
2000; Mirjana Skoco and William Woodger, "War Crimes," in Hammond and Herman,
Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis).
Some
have argued that as Milosevic is a bad man we should not be troubled by his
being brought to The Hague and tried. If we can’t get all the bad guys, why
shouldn’t we be satisfied with some? This is a seriously mistaken argument. For
one thing, biased justice is no justice at all. Apart from making a fair trial
for the bad man extremely unlikely, this biased process is the counterpart of
exoneration of the NATO villains and others within Yugoslavia that they favor
(e.g., the Croatian managers of the Krajina massacres and expulsions). Clinton,
Albright, Blair, Schroder and company bear very heavy responsibility for the
breakup of Yugoslavia, having done this is a manner that encouraged ethnic
cleansing instead of seeking modes of conflict resolution, and in Kosovo
resorting to war instead of working out a negotiated settlement. This was a war
of aggression and vengeance by imperialist bullies that culminated their
destabilizing interventions in Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s, with no
constructive end or result. (See David Chandler and Diana Johnstone in Degraded
Capability; Robert Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided.)
As a
supposedly independent tribunal has honed in on their targeted villain, the
indictment and trial of Milosevic vindicates a false NATO-apologetic view of
Balkan history as a product of a demon out of control, and it helps portray
Clinton, Blair and company as humanitarian warriors, managing a humane
imperialism. It also deflects attention from the Godfather’s support of equally
or more murderous allied villains in Indonesia, Turkey, Colombia, and the Middle
East, and his own criminal operation in Iraq, all of which are tribunal free. In
short, it provides the moral basis and sets the stage for further imperial
interventions under the guise of protecting human rights. (See David Chandler,
Human Rights and International Intervention: The Ethical Assault on Democracy,
forthcoming from Verso; Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons From
Kosovo.)_