March 28, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:The Purpose of The Milosevic Trial
What is the purpose of the Milosevic Trial?
Before you respond, I've been reading Beyond The Mountains of the Damned. I don't need any further convincing as to the brutality he sponsored. That's not my question.
It's not really a trial. The purpose isn't to discover guilt or innocence, the purpose is to show the extent of guilt.
The court proceedings did not bring him to this "trial", bombing did. Only the vanquished get "tried".
I think there is substantial value to extensive inquiries into the depth of brutality in Kosovo and elsewhere. The Nuremberg trials certainly provided an exceptional historic record. History must record the wars in the former Yugoslavia as well. But I'm not sure that a trial, which to me means law enforcement and punishment, is the correct term for this. It seems to support the idea that these trials might somehow substitute for the use of force that is necessary to rectify the depredations of future Milosevics and Serbian para-militaries.
Fascinating testimony comes out of this. But as a trial (at least in the U.S. sense) it has been a circus. The prosecutor suggests:
This tribunal, and this trial in particular, gives the most powerful demonstration that no one is above the law or beyond the reach of international justice.
Do they? Will this trial change anyone's mind, or deter ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world? I don't think it will. No tyrant plans on defeat, and defeat is a necessary precondition to a trial like this. There can be no deterrent value. Only justification (or, in the worse case, rationalization) of military intervention after the fact. Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at March 28, 2002 06:33 PM | Technorati inbound links