How To Bankrupt the War Machine

A German court has ruled that the relatives of Serbian civilians who were killed by NATO bombings in 1999 have no legal right to any form of compensation from the countries that bombed them.

The bombing occurred in May 1999, in the Serbian village of Vavarin, far away from the action in Kosovo. However, NATO pilots - believed to have been American, guided by German targeting - apparently thought that the villagers should not miss out on the fun.

It was a sacred day, the Festival of the Holy Trinity. However, for a military alliance that had bombed bridges, apartments, a kindergarten and a church (they apologized, saying they had thought it was just a hospital) for Easter, that was hardly a concern:

“while children rushed across a bridge to join the festivities in the town, the alliance jets launched their attacks. One missile obliterated the bridge and as the townsfolk were rushing to the aid of the wounded, a second missile struck, claiming additional lives.”

The German judge in the case overruled the verdict of an earlier hearing in Cologne: “though the regional court there rejected the concrete claim of the Varvarian survivors and relatives, it had ruled that in principle civilian victims of war could claim damages.”

The new judgment found, however, that this legal principle safeguarding humanity does not apply to humans:

“‘Traditionally military operations are not subject to scrutiny in a court of law,’ Frankfurt civil advocate Michael Bothe told Der Spiegel magazine before the ruling was issued. A ruling in favor of the victims would have been a ‘landmark on the way to the civilization of war.’”

What a sleazy, deceitful excuse! Bothe makes it sound as if the court is doing us all a favor, by keeping war marginalized and an object of scorn- simply by ignoring its results. And of course, war is something never made by civilized peoples or nations. They just don’t declare it as such anymore.

Had the judges ruled in favor of the murdered Serbian villagers, it would have created a ‘landmark’ alright. It would have sent a message to world governments, and especially to the brazenly unaccountable Western ones led by the United States, that they cannot simply get away with massacring innocent people and then just write it off as a mistake.

Politicians obviously could care less what anyone thinks of their integrity or sense of humanity. But if waging wars becomes unpopular with voters owing to its costliness, then maybe we would have a chance to “pre-empt” them. Imagine if before the next invasion, Pentagon planners had to factor in how many billions would be required to recompensate afterwards the relatives of innocent people massacred as a direct result of the invasion?

This is why everyone who is opposed to war, whether they care about the Serbs or not, should lament this terrible ruling. Every once in a while something comes along that threatens to unravel the whole fabric of deceit upon which all calls for war are based. Obviously no amount of monetary compensation can ever replace the loss of a loved one, but if such lawsuits ever took off, it could help to financially paralyze the mechanisms for war before it happened.

It is true that America is an overly litigious society, hampered by a lot of irrelevant and excessive cases in the system. But unless there continue to be cases like the Serbs’ - for which the Clinton and Bush administrations have generously donated more than enough evidence - the appropriate legal arguments and challenges will never be made. In the end, a governing class that respects nothing but its own power cannot be restrained by anything other than the rule of law.

It is worth a try. And so even in their defeat, the villagers of Vavarin have done a good job of consciousness-raising. Let’s hope that people don’t forget it.