Friday, April 02, 2004

Things going wrong in Kosovo? Let's punish Serbia

The United States has decided to cut off aid to Serbia, because U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he "cannot certify" that Serbia and Montenegro is cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

In the meantime, a sidelight comparison in this story reveals that "aid to Kosovo averaged $814 per inhabitant and East Timor received $256 per person. But to date, the contribution to Afghanistan from the international community has averaged $67 per person."

The U.S. is blinking mad that the Serbs won't turn over former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic or wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Oddly enough, at the beginning of the recent ethnic cleansing against Serbs in Kosovo, a Serb policeman was jailed in Serbia for war crimes. (When you read this story, don't forget the principle of atrocity inflation.)

A priest and his son, both supporters of Karadzic, the news reports say, are in the hospital with possibly fatal head wounds from a raid on a house where Karadzic was thought to be staying.

I don't know if Mladic or Karadzic are war criminals. If they are, I have no sympathy for them. But given the level of lying venom spewed at everything Serbian for the past couple of decades, and given the inanity and corruption of the United Nations, I don't think I would trust the Hague to give Mother Teresa a fair trial. So, what to make of all this?

A Serbian government press release is more optimistic about this process than I am inclined to be:
The Serbian government believes that a decision by the United States to temporarily suspend aid to Serbia-Montenegro will not endanger the relations between the two countries, according to a statement following a session today.

I am glad that Pres. Clinton got this Balkan beast tamed, so that it doesn't come back to bite us during the war on terror.

I'm also alternately sorry and glad that Gen. Wesley Clark is out of the presidential race, because I am sorely tempted to have a wax doll made of him and stick pins into it.

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