Did Slobodan Milosevic commit suicide, or was he poisoned? Another question: Who cares?
The Serbian strongman is dead and if there is any reason to feel glum about that fact, it's that he's escaped justice.
It also allowed us to see some sickening accolades in his favor among Serbians. Although not all of them regard the ethnic-cleansing nationalist kindly, a lot of them believe he had a right to protect the disintegrating Yugoslavia. They also question how fairly he was treated during his tribunal in The Hague.
A respondent on a BBC thread about Milosevic's death stated: "Here I clearly state the West has done wrong to Milosevic and the Serbs ... The garbage you people have piled onto this misunderstood Nation is phenomenal. You are clearly loosing [sic] my respect."
We have we done wrong to Milosevic and the Serbs? What about the ethnic Albanians that Milsoevic and his henchmen (Ravko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic) slaughtered in their quest to keep a poorly designed nation together? I feel sorry for Serbia - it is true that we do not understand that country much at all. We would do well to remember that a tortured history often lends itself to times of barbarous acts of irredentism.
However, I was behind the 1999 effort to oust Milosevic as much as I was the ousting of Saddam Hussein. Butchering dictators must face the music at the hands of a furious West.
Milosevic is gone. Our work is not over, and the final book on the suffering of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina has not been closed yet. Not until we've caught Mssrs. Mladic and Karadzic.
Article comments
1 - Pacze Moj
"We have we done wrong to Milosevic and the Serbs? What about the ethnic Albanians that Milsoevic and his henchmen (Ravko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic) slaughtered in their quest to keep a poorly designed nation together?"
I think it's possible to still do wrong to someone who's done wrong.
The "problem" with Milosevic's death is that it will likely bring to an end international interest in a problem that is far more complicated than just one bad man scape-goat -- however guilty he may be.
What about other atrocities? Committed against the Serbs, perhaps? Can we not condemn Slobodan Milosevic without resorting to a one-sided, simplistic, comforting, bad-versus-good picture of a conflict that is none of those things?
Here's a Canadian article (CBC) from 2003 that deals with Croatian atrocities:
Milosevic's death doesn't suddenly uncover a new truth, support one we want to believe in, or make a further search pointless. But it seems like it does; and that's what makes me glum.
2 - Valery
I remember watching NATO sideshow barker Jamie Shea on television promoting the bombing of Yugoslavia and it was a sickening performance.
When they trotted him out you knew a horrible scam was taking place. Here is some more on Milosevic the Baddy.
>>"Neil Clark, covering the UN War Crimes Tribunal for the Guardian in 2003, wrote that "not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic's personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question." In the worst massacre that Milosevic had been charged with--at Srebrenica in 1995--the prosecution "produced nothing to challenge the verdict of the five-year inquiry commissioned by the Dutch government--that there was 'no proof that orders for the slaughter came from Serb political leaders in Belgrade.'"
"The trial has heard more than 100 prosecution witnesses, and not a single one has testified that Milosevic ordered war crimes," wrote John Laughland in the British Spectator<<".
http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/17/milosevic_.html
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