Extraditing Milosevic: 'Pragmatism'and Appeasement, vs. 'First Principles'
by Benjamin C. Works
Strategic Issues Research Institute
June 24, 2001

When governments want to pass out bad news or bad policy, they do it over the weekend and late at night; a function SIRIUS refers to as "news in the dead of night." It is one of the many obscenities that pragmatists, ideologues and manipulators practice against their peoples.

America cannot be just to itself if it denies justice to other sovereign states. At issue is the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague war crimes tribunal – the International Criminal Tribunal for (former) Yugoslavia (ICTY).

After weeks of crumbling before international blackmail where potential reconstruction aid is at stake, part of the government of Yugoslavia abandoned an attempt to pass a parliamentary law on cooperation with the ICTY. Instead, 9 of its sixteen members issued an executive order (seven Montenegro coalition members refused to attend the cabinet meeting), which voted 8-1 to pass the decree.

Yugoslavia's present government consists of a few legitimate scholars and a lot of ambitious "personalities." It embraces a wide spectrum of fashionable ideologies, but only its figurehead President, Vojislav Kostunica, has demonstrated a capacity for philosophy and statesmanship; he is being overwhelmed as I write, by legions of political Lilliputians at home and abroad. Allies and foes, alike.

Mr. Milosevic, the object of this international political stew, is not a statesman: not a great man; not a capable leader, though he was a shrewd tactical politician facing an impossible situation. Did any of what he actually did constitute a war crime? Or was he as a head of a sovereign state, simply executing his constitutional duty to provide for the common defense and to ensure domestic tranquility?

"FIRST PRINCIPLES"

Colin Powell knows better, but insisted that if Yugoslavia wants the US to contribute to a Donors' Conference on Yugoslavia's reconstruction (set for June 29-30), they must cooperate with the ICTY. He told Mr. Kostunica as much when he met the Yugoslav head-of-state (a constitutionally weak position) in mid-May. Powell also argued to stop Operation Desert Storm a few hours too early. We are all, fallible, but are responsible for the casualties of our errors. We are obliged to learn.

At a luncheon-conference at the Cato Institute that Wednesday, Kostunica warned us not to set such impossible conditions, yet the conditions remain. Colin Powell decided not to pick a fight in America, in favor of coercing Yugoslavia over the price of monetary aid.

Colin Powell knows better, but opted for the easier political course of "pragmatically" not picking a fight with Yugoslavia's enemies in Congress. In fact, though General Powell thinks he is making a pragmatic choice, he is temporizing and mollifying on position, not principle – the way of appeasement. He should stick to the "First Principles," which Kostunica was trying to adhere to in re-establishing credible justice in war-tattered Yugoslavia.

What are the first principles? The idea descends from the "summum bonum" of the Greek Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. They sought to define the "highest good." An alternate expression of summum bonum is to define the foundational principles of a "system": the "first principles." To make it easy for Americans and others, start with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," from our Declaration of Independence" as a first principle.

The six first principles of establishing a constitutional government are laid out in our Constitution's Preamble, and define the six deliverable purposes of a government; to:

Beyond that, the first principles also include the enumerated freedoms in our "Bill of Rights;" freedom of speech and worship, habeas corpus and trial by jury, etc.

You cannot establish or re-establish justice based on coercion, but only through support of "first principles." To demand that Slobodan Milosevic be remanded to the ICTY's Kangaroo Court by promising financial assistance to Yugoslavia, while denying support of "Justice" in Yugoslavia, is to trample over the civil rights of individuals, the sovereign duties of heads of state, and the first principles of constitutional states. To offer such a bribe corrupts the Bush Administration, as well as the Kostunica coalition Government.

– "Ah, but the Bush Administration has such a larger agenda!" Fine, I want my tax cut and less government, but I want government by principle, not tyranny-by-fiat.

The US Constitution also expressly prohibited "post facto" indictments and "Bills of Attainder," yet the ICTY indictment, upon inspection, could well be argued to be just such a post facto action – a politically defined charge levied against an unpopular man for political purposes.

– Readers will see SIRIUS write more about how first principles apply, regarding Macedonia and the Army's choice of the LAV-3 for its transformed infantry brigades.

– Remember this. Military theorists should consider that our political leaders ignored these "first principles" in Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Macedonia. We are stuck by their Public Relations-driven choices. Remember "Federalism."

THE ICTY INDICTMENT

I have pored through the 74-page ICTY indictment and know it to be largely propaganda (if not entirely fabricated) and drawn at a time, in May 1999, when the US could not find an easy way to end its direction-less and ineffective air war against Yugoslavia. By indicting Milosevic and tarring him as a "war criminal," the Clinton Cabal and NATO now had some political and propaganda leverage; they no longer had to negotiate with the defiant Serb leader, they only had to pummel him into submission. We could pay lip service to our Constitution and steamroller over Yugoslavia's.

It seems to me that the trap of the news camera encourages politicians into even deeper mistakes and outright crimes against our intelligence and our constitutional due process. But the news camera is generous to those it adores, it is not critical; it accepts unsupported assertions by the glamorous. It conveys lies, willingly. It worships the glamorous, rather than inspects them – unless you are Republican or Serb.

In an article for Canada's Serbs (also sent to Belgrade) SIRIUS suggested that one principled way around this ICTY-Indictment impasse would be to impanel an international grand jury of respected legal scholars to review the credibility of the ICTY indictment's many charges. There were many ways of negotiating a legitimate intermediate step, based on principles both Belgrade and Washington could agree upon. None of these happened. Is it easier to sacrifice an unpopular man than to adhere rigorously to principle? It appears to be so, and if so, we are all lost.

STILL A WAY OUT

This whole process stinks to high Heaven and, yet, though SIRIUS increasingly joins many readers in their skepticism, this situation is not irretrievable. The present government of Yugoslavia is violating its own constitution in this action, and with no clear majority. They risk criminal prosecution, I am told, if they fail to follow this tragic attempt at mollification with the clear re-establishment of justice and revival of the economy. Has the Kostunica government had its "Munich" moment of failed appeasement? Or has it, in offering a last concession, created circumstances for establishing "first principles"?

The fact remains that the ICTY indictment, though mostly bogus, exists. The best way to discredit the existing indictment is to address it head-on in an unquestionably rigorous venue of law. If Belgrade cannot impanel an international "grand jury" of respected legal scholars, then Yugoslavia's government must provide the Milosevic defense team with every means, witness and document, necessary to establish the true circumstances of the major events and the truth of the criminal charges.

The United States, too, if it is to adhere to its founding principles, must also contribute to absolute justice, not to political retribution. This is especially so since the trial of Milosevic will only provide "cover" for the reprehensible behavior of Bill Clinton, Albright, Holbrooke, Wesley Clark, Bob Dole, Joseph DioGuardi and their countless shills and misguided allies. By opting to support this un-credible court, the US is enshrining a precedent that can easily boomerang against future American leaders. Beware!

The Bush Administration, with Colin Powell leading, should make a clear commitment to seeking justice, not a political conviction, in The Hague. Only by getting to all the facts, pleasant or unpleasant as they might be, can we set the historical record straight and lay the groundwork for establishing free states and peoples in Central and Eastern Europe.

"Due process" is a first principle, not a bargaining point. As the KLA continues its outrageous campaign of terror, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and civil war in Macedonia, it is even more important for Secretary Powell and President Bush to support real justice.

BELGRADE'S "PRAGMATIC" MISTAKE

Just as Colin Powell has sought a pragmatic way out of the Milosevic-Kosovo question and appears to have chosen temporizing, Belgrade's "Cabinet of Rivals" has also sought the weakest course: "sacrifice Milosevic." This comes at a point when there is a prospect of a fiscal reward (which I grant they do need) and when "evidence" of widespread cover-up of missing bodies is being exposed in Belgrade (some 86 bodies were found in a truck in the Danube, etc., ad nauseum). It is easier to sacrifice "the Socialist despot" and try to get on with things; but will this naked compromise of Constitution and "due process" build governmental discipline to sustain the republic of the future?

President Kostunica proposed to restore Yugoslavia based on first principles drawn directly from our founding documents and philosophy. He still can, but it will be hard.

In the final analysis, the Bush Administration, which pays great lip service to "principles," would not allow a dedicated Federalist to restore justice in a nation that has been unjustly hectored by the Nazi "revanchists" of World War II. But the Clinton Cabal supported the Fascist Croats of the Ustasha, the Bosnian and Croat Muslim Black Shirts of SS Kama and SS Handschar and the Albanian Nazis of SS Skanderbeg. SIRIUS has sufficient graphic evidence on hand to prove this assertion beyond a reasonable doubt.

The War Crimes charges exempt these Nazis and place all the blame upon "the Serbs," and particularly upon the shoulders of an unpopular leader, who at least adhered to the principle of ensuring the survival of the Serbian people and those who share the pluralistic and multicultural nation of Yugoslavia.

Shame on us all for failing; shame on them for succeeding; and greatest shame on the NATO media for their self-seduction. "A plague on both houses," upon those half-formed minds who succumbed to political mollification over the restoration of "First Principles."

© Copyright 2001 by Benjamin C. Works – SIRIUS

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